"You are----?"
"I am----" taking my cue from his own manner.
"The friend of her friend?"
"His great friend."
"Can you climb?"
"I can."
"Are you steady?"
"Yes."
"It is well; are you ready?"
I had not counted on this, and involuntarily I asked, in some surprise,
"To-night?"
"To-night. You cannot go in the day."
I thought of the speech I had heard: "No one goes over the mountain
except at night," and the ominous conclusion, "Who goes over the
mountain comes no more." My strange host, however, diverted my thoughts.
"A stranger cannot go except at night," he said, gravely; and then
added, "I must get back to watch over Elsket."
"I shall be ready in a minute," I said, turning.
In ten minutes I had bade good-by to my simple hosts, and leaving them
with a sufficient evidence of my consideration to secure their lasting
good-will, I was on my way down the street again with my light luggage
on my back. This time the entire population of the little village
was in the road, and as I passed along I knew by their murmuring
conversation that they regarded my action with profound misgiving. I
felt, as I returned their touch of the cap and bade them good-by, a
little like the gladiators of old who, about to die, saluted Cæsar.
At the gate my strange guide, who had not moved from the spot where I
first found him, insisted on taking my luggage, and buckling his straps
around it and flinging it over his back, he handed me his stick, and
without a word strode off straight toward the black mountain whose vast
wall towered above us to the clouds.