I was far out of the way.
The snow, which had been falling at intervals during each day since Jacqueline's abduction, had long ago covered up the tracks of the sleigh. I had to trust to my own wit to solve my problem, and there did not seem to be any solution.
There was no visible entrance to that mountain lake on any side, and to descend that sheer, ice-coated precipice was an impossibility.
It was long after nightfall when I reached the cabin again, exhausted and dispirited.
I awoke too late on the fifth morning, and I was too stiff to make much of a journey. I climbed to the edge of the glacier once again in the hope of discovering an approach. I examined every foot of the ground with meticulous care.
But whenever I approached the edge the same wall of rock ran down vertically for some three hundred feet, veneered with ice and wrapped in a perpetual blinding spray.
And yet sleighs could enter that valley below. For at the extreme edge of the lake, outside the enclosed piece of land, I perceived one, a tiny thing, far under me, and yet unmistakably a sleigh.
I was within three hundred feet of Jacqueline's home and yet as far away as though leagues divided us. I looked down at the château and ground my teeth and swore that I would win her. But all the rest of that day went in fruitless searching.
I must succeed in finding the entrance on the following day, for now Père Antoine might return at any time, and I knew that he would prove far less tractable here in his own bailiwick than he had been when I defied him at the Frontenac. By hook or by crook I must gain entrance to the valley.
This was to be my last night in the cabin. I could not return, not though I were perishing in the snows.