Kansas University Weekly.
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on, but her face grew whiter and whiter and the guide felt her hand tremble in his own. At last she paused out of breath, at the foot of an almost perpendicular wall of rock, seamed with many crevices.
"How much farther, is it"? she asked in a voice scarcely audible above the rising wind.
"We have only to climb this wall and we are there" the most dangerous and difficult part of the ascent. In spite of her labored breath and the sharp pain over her heart recurring at frequent intervals, she managed to scale the wall and stood at last, her loosened hair streaming in the wind, on the summit of the highest mountain in Colorado. She drew a deep breath of unspeakable delight.
"Isn't it beautiful"? she cried.
The guide began indicating the various points of interest.
"Over there is Sheep mountain—you remember passing it, don't you?and that is Flat Top and that—"
He stopped suddenly. Miss Raymond had fainted.
Meanwhile the sky had become overcast with leaden gray clouds, the wind was rising, and as the guide bent anxiously over the unconscious girl he felt a soft, cold touch on his cheek. It was a flake of snow.
When at last Miss Raymond opened her languid blue eyes the guide, quite beside him himself, shook her roughly, exclaiming:—
"Come! Come! We must start back at once. It is beginning to snow."
"I cannot take another step" she said faintly. "My heart—the altitude—I—"
"But you must"! cried the guide despairingly.
Miss Raymond shook her head. There was a moment of silence.
"Then I shall have to carry you" said the guide, almost as pale as she. He lifted her in his arms and began the descent.
How he managed to get down no one knows. The icy wind blew in his face; the whirling snow blinded him and made the path slippery and hence doubly dangerous. Once a boulder rolled from under his feet and went crashing
down into the bottomless chasm below. Blinded, panting and benumbed with cold he staggered on until he was utterly exhausted. He knew that if he tried to carry her farther both would perish. The only thing to do was to leave her and hurry on for help. He had reached Boulder Field and the distance yet to be traversed was not so very great. Placing his unconscious burden on the sheltered side of a rock, he wrapped her securely in his overcoat, and started on a run down the mountain side. Several times he seemed to hear a piteous voice call after him:
“Come back! Come back”!
"It is only the wind," he said to himself and hurried on.
When Miss Raymond regained consciousness, a storm was raging over the desolate mountain. The north wind, blowing across the naked peaks, chilled her with its icy breath and stung her cheek with its flail of snow. Through the gathering darkness two gleaming eyes peered at her a moment, and then a gaunt form slunk across the mountain side. The fine snow, driven before a furious wind, hurled itself relentlessly against the bleak mountain, heaping itself in the wind swept gorges in ever deepening drifts. The brief, gray twilight gave way to sinister night. No longer able to see the whirling snow or feel its cold touch on her numbed face and fingers, she listened despairingly to the funeral chant of the wind., oppressed by the utter desolation which encompassed her. It was her own requiem to which she was listening and the white snow, fine as frozen sea foam, was her winding sheet. Never a bride had a lovelier robe than this; never a queen had a drearier dirge chanted over her grave. These were thoughts which tortured her bewildered brain. Suddenly, a blind rage against fate took possession of her. She could not die; she was too young; only old people ought to die. She flung from her the overcoat in which the guide had wrapped her so carefully and ran sobbing down the mountain side. No, she would not die, she thought fiercely in her delirium. The next moment she stumbled and fell heavily, her head striking on