"There's hope yet," he said, "if your lord guessed at the end what was up and had the wit to chuck himself out. Thirty feet down, just under this point, there's a knob sticking up they call the Giant's Nose. It's deep with snow now. It wouldn't hurt to fall on it—and there's a tree stump he could catch hold of to save himself if he kept his senses. But my poor dogs with the heavy sledge behind 'em wouldn't have the devil's chance. A man wouldn't either, unless he jumped as the sleigh went. Well, we shall see, when I've got the rope."
"What rope?" Teano managed to move his stiff lips.
"A rope we keep for the summer trippers," Garth explained. "More than once some silly gabe has got too close and lost his head, lookin' over the Lovers' Leap. It's a suicide place too—though we don't tell folks that. If anyone's caught on the Giant's nose, we can fish him up. The rope's in a hut near by, that's never locked."
Teano is a smaller man than Garth, and it was Teano who, with the rope in a sailor knot under his arms, was let down by the big fellow, to look for me. I had kept consciousness at first, and had saved myself in the way suggested by the mountaineer: but by the time Teano came prospecting, I had dropped into a pleasant sleep. An hour or two more in my bed of snow, I should have been hidden for ever by a smooth white winding-sheet, and so have kept my tryst with Death.
As it was, Death and I failed to meet. I lived not only to help avenge Anne Garth, but to go on with my work for the girl I loved, and—living or dead—shall love for ever. For a time after my adventure on Crescent Mountain (where it's needless to say Maida had neither arrived nor been expected) that vengeance and that work moved slowly. But so also move the mills of the gods.
EPISODE V
THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT
I was bringing my journal up to date one day at my Long Island hotel, when a page-boy brought me a card engraved with the very last name I should ever have guessed: "Lady Allendale."
"Is the lady downstairs?" I asked, dazed.