He was ready to admit that he was somewhat stiff and weary, for he had carried the provisions and the heavy blankets that the girls had now tucked round them.
The latter commenced to flag when they started again; and, as it happened, the strip of bench they followed rapidly narrowed in and grew rougher until it became little more than a sloping ledge with the hillside dropping almost sheer away from it.

It was strewn with great fragments that had fallen from the wall of rock above, and banks of snow lay packed between them in the hollows.

Every now and then one or another of the party sank deep on stepping down from some ledge of slippery stone.

They were on the northern side of a spur of the higher range, though they were approaching the angle where it broke off and fell in a steep declivity facing west.

This point they had to turn before they reached the spot from which Kinnaird purposed descending to the river.