True, the Glacier des Nantillons in places was steep.

True, there were the seracs--those great slabs and pinnacles of ice set up on end and tottering, high above, where the glacier curved over a brow of rock and broke--one of them might have fallen.

But Lattery and he had so often ascended and descended that glacier on the way to the Charmoz and the Grepon and the Plan.

He could not believe his friend had come to harm that way.
Michel, however, clung to his opinion.
"The worst part of the climb was over," he argued.

"The very worst pitch, monsieur, is at the very beginning when you leave the glacier, and then it is very bad again half way up when you descend into a gully; but Monsieur Lattery was very safe on rock, and having got so high, I think he would have climbed the last rocks with his guide." Michel spoke with so much certainty that even in the face of his telegram, in the face of the story which Jules had told, hope sprang up within Chayne's heart.
"Then he may be still up there on some ledge.