There were two men there.
"Ah! you have come to see us off, Michel," said Chayne.
"No, monsieur, I bring my mule," said Revailloud, with a smile, and he
helped Sylvia to mount it. "To lead mules to the Montanvert--is not that
my business? Simond has a rope," he added, as he saw Chayne sling a coil
across his shoulder.
"We may need an extra one," said Chayne, and the party moved off upon
its long march. At the Montanvert hotel, on the edge of the Mer de
Glace, Sylvia descended from her mule, and at once the party went down
on to the ice.
"Au revoir!" shouted Michel from above, and he stood and watched them,
until they passed out of his sight. Sylvia turned and waved her hand to
him. But he made no answering sign. For his eyes were no longer good.
"He is very kind," said Sylvia. "He understood that there was some
trouble, and while he led the mule he sought to comfort me," and then
between a laugh and a sob she added: "You will never guess how. He
offered to give me his little book with all the signatures--the little
book which means so much to him."
It was the one thing which he had to offer her, as Sylvia understood, and
always thereafter she remembered him with a particular tenderness. He had
been a good friend to her, asking nothing and giving what he had. She saw
him often in the times which were to come, but when she thought of him,
she pictured him as on that early morning standing on the bluff of cliff
by the Montanvert with the reins of his mule thrown across his arm, and
straining his old eyes to hold his friends in view.
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