“Undoubtedly, sir; and if it is so, we shall have trouble.”
“Pooh! They will, you mean. But I’m not going to worry myself about that. There—let’s get on.”
Melchior gave a quick glance backward, and Saxe followed his example, his eyes catching directly a glimpse as he thought, of a human face high up, and peering down at them from among some stones which had fallen upon a ledge.
But the glimpse was only instantaneous, and as he looked he felt that he could not be sure, and that it might be one of the blocks of lichened stones that he had taken for a face.
They went on slowly and more slowly, for the path grew so difficult that it was easy to imagine that no one had ever been along there before, and Saxe said so.
“Oh yes,” said Melchior; “I have often been along here. It has been my business these many years to go everywhere and find strange wild places in the mountains. The men, too, who hunt the chamois and the bear—”
“Eh? what?” cried Saxe, plucking up his ears. “Bears! There are no bears here.”
“Oh yes,” said the guide, smiling. “Not many; but there are bears in the mountains. I have seen them several times, and the ibex too, more to the south, on the Italian slope.”
“Shall we see them?”
“You may, herr. Perhaps we shall come across a chamois or two to-day, far up yonder in the distance.”