"This is the place," said Sharpley.

"Let me look over," said Henry, advancing to the edge.

"Are you mad?" exclaimed his father, drawing him back hastily.

"I will look, gentlemen," said the guide. "It will be safest for me."

He threw himself flat upon his stomach, and thus in safety peeped into the chasm¹.

"Do you see anything?" asked Sharpley, agitated².

"Wait till I look earnestly," and after a breathless pause, he answered slowly:

"No, I see nothing; but the cliff is not so steep or so high as I thought. There are some bushes growing in parts. He might be stopped [218] by these."

"You can't see any traces of him, can you?"

Another pause.

"No. The snow seems disturbed in one place, but if he had fallen there, he would be there still."

"Might he not have fallen there and rolled to the bottom?"

"Perhaps so. I cannot tell."

"Let me look," said Sharpley.

The suggestion of the possibility that Frank might have escaped was fraught³ to him with danger. All his hopes of safety and success depended upon the boy's death. He wanted to see for himself.

The guide rose, and Sharpley, imitating his posture⁴, threw himself on the ground and looked over, borrowing the glass. But such a sense of horror, brought on by his own criminality, overcame him as he lay there that his vision was blurred⁵, and he came near dropping the glass. He rose, trembling.

"I can see nothing of him," he said. "He is certainly dead. Poor boy! [219] He could not possibly have escaped."

"Let me look," said Abercrombie.

But he also could see no trace of the body.

"I think," he said, rising, "that our best course will be to descend⁶ and explore at the bottom of the cliff."

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