“Yes: what is it?”
“Don’t you feel as if we were horses haltered together for market?”
“I might answer, sir— Don’t you feel like a donkey being led?”
“No. Why?”
“Because you ask such an absurd, childish question, and that at a serious time.”
Saxe was silent.
“Mr Dale needn’t be so gruff,” he said to himself, as he tramped on, looking up at the rocky sides of the valley, which grew more and more snow-clad as they went on, and giving himself greater trouble by missing the footsteps of his leaders. Once he nearly stumbled and fell, giving a jerk to the rope; but he recovered himself directly, and tramped on in silence, finding the going so arduous that he began to wish for the time when they would leave the glacier and take to the rocks.
But he could not keep silence long.
“Shall we have to go back along the mountain?” he said. “Or will there be some other track?”
“I expect we shall cross the ridge into a similar valley to this, and go down another glacier; but— Ah! Hold tight!”