But, ah, I was wrathful! That I, Gil de Berault, should be outwitted, and led by the nose like a ringed bull, by this Gascon lout! That I, whom all Paris knew and feared--if it did not love--the terror of Zaton's, should come to my end in this dismal waste of snow and rock, done to death by some pitiful smuggler or thief! It must not be.

Surely in the last resort I could give an account of one man, though his belt were stuffed with pistols.
But how?
Only, it seemed, by open force.

My heart began to flutter as I planned it; and then grew steady again.

A hundred paces before us a gully or ravine on the left ran up into the snow-field.

Opposite its mouth a jumble of stones and broken rocks covered the path, I marked this for the place.