“Gold?” cried Nita, with such energy that her companions looked at her in surprise.
“Why, Nita,” exclaimed Emma, “your looks are almost as troubled and anxious as those of Le Croix himself.”
“How strange!” said Nita, musing and paying no attention to Emma’s remark. “Why does he think so?”
“Indeed, Mademoiselle, I cannot tell; but he seems quite sure of it, and spends nearly all his time in the mountains searching for gold, and hunting the chamois.”
They parted here, and for a time Lewis tried to rally Nita about what he styled her sympathy with the chamois-hunter, but Nita did not retort with her wonted sprightliness; the flow of her spirits was obviously checked, and did not return during their walk back to the hotel.
While this little incident was enacting in the valley, events of a far different nature were taking place among the mountains, into the solitudes of which the Professor, accompanied by Captain Wopper, Lawrence, Slingsby, and Gillie, and led by Antoine, had penetrated for the purpose of ascertaining the motion of a huge precipice of ice.
“You are not a nervous man, I think,” said the Professor to Antoine as they plodded over the ice together.
“No, Monsieur, not very,” answered the guide, with a smile and a sly glance out of the corners of his eyes. Captain Wopper laughed aloud at the question, and Gillie grinned. Gillie’s countenance was frequently the residence of a broad grin. Nature had furnished him with a keen sense of the ludicrous, and a remarkably open countenance. Human beings are said to be blind to their own peculiarities.
If Gillie had been an exception to this rule and if he could have, by some magical power, been enabled to stand aside and look at his own spider-like little frame, as others saw it, clad in blue tights and buttons, it is highly probable that he would have expired in laughing at himself.
“I ask the question,” continued the Professor, “because I mean to request your assistance in taking measurements in a somewhat dangerous place, namely, the ice-precipice of the Tacul.”