Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/196

186 seeing the other woman near, pale and wild, repeat, No one can be sure who it is—better wait.

Ah! the suspense of waiting. The whole population of the vast hotel were as anxiously watching for the return of the one survivor as though they were related to him. Lunch was hastily eaten with little conversation, and that little the one absorbing subject of the accident. Telescopes and glasses were levelled for hours at the snow-peak where the tragedy had been. But they saw nothing; after the accident, the man remaining had crawled out of sight.

At dawn next morning the rescue party returned with the one living creature they had found and the bodies of the mangled dead. Those who had forgotten in sleep the tragedy of the day before were awakened by a woman's cry, and sprang up alarmed. But one girl who had not lain down to sleep, but trod the floor all night, pressed her hands above her heart, hearing the scream. "It is not her son!" she said. "Thank God!"

Edward Rounds recovered slowly from the