“You are willfully misunderstanding me,” he retorted.
“No. I honestly believed you felt the rope quiver a little.”
“Alas! it is the atmosphere. My compliments fall on idle ears.”
Barth interrupted this play of harmless chaff by jerking some remark over his shoulder. “Looks like a guxe,” he said gruffly.
“Nonsense!” said Bower,—“a bank of mist. The sun will soon melt it.”
“It’s a guxe, right enough,” chimed in Karl, who had recovered his power of speech. “That is why the boy was blowing his horn—to show he was bringing the cattle home.”
“Well, then, push on. The sooner we are in the hut the better.”
“Please, what is a guxe?” asked Helen, when the men had nothing more to say.
“A word I would have wished to add later to your Alpine phrase book. It means a storm, a blizzard.”