"Jist at that moment, her eyes being better accustomed
to the dim light of the place, she see'd a man, a sittin'
at the fur eend of the room, with his back to the wall,
larfin' ready to kill himself. He grinned so, he showed
his corn-crackers from ear to ear. She said, he stript
his teeth like a catamount, he look'd so all mouth.

"Well, that encouraged her, for there ain't much harm in
a larfin' man; it's only them that never larf that's
fearfulsome. So sais she 'My good man, will you he so
kind as to lend me your arm down this awful peak, and I
will reward you handsomely, you may depend.'

"Well, he made no answer, nother; and thinkin' he didn't
onderstand English, she tried him in Italian, and then
in broken French, and then bungled out a little German;
but no, still no answer. He took no more notice of her
and her mister, and senior, and mountsheer, and mynheer,
than if he never heerd them titles, but jist larfed on.

"She stopped a minit, and looked at him full in the face,
to see what he meant by all this ongenteel behaviour,
when all of a sudden, jist as she moved one step nearer
to him, she saw he was a dead man, and had been so long
there, part of the flesh had dropt off or dried off his
face; and it was that that made him grin that way, like
a fox-trap. It was the bone-house they was in. The place
where poor, benighted, snow-squalled stragglers, that
perish on the mountains, are located, for their friends
to come and get them, if they want 'em; and if there