the day before. Up and on all day, and at
evening, passing out of the great zone of timber, he came on the bald,
thunder-smitten summit ridge, where one ruined tree held up its skeleton
arms against the sunset, and the wind came keen and frosty. So, with
failing, feeble legs, upward still, toward the region of the granite and
the snow; toward the eyry of the kite and the eagle.

* * * * *

Brisk as they all were at Garoopna, none were so brisk as Cecil and Sam.
Charles Hawker wanted to come with them, but Sam asked him to go with
Jim, and, long before the others were ready, our two had strapped their
blankets to their saddles, and followed by Sam's dog Rover, now getting
a little gray about the nose, cantered off up the river.

Neither spoke at first. They knew what a solemn task they had before
them; and, while acting as though everything depended on speed, guessed
well that their search was only for a little corpse, which, if they had
luck, they would find stiff and cold under some tree or crag.

Cecil began: "Sam, depend on it, that child has crossed the river to
this side. If he had been on the plains, he would have been seen from a
distance in a few hours."

"I quite agree," said Sam. "Let us go down on this side till we are
opposite the hut, and search for marks by the river-side."

So they agreed, and in half an hour were opposite the hut, and, riding
across to it to ask a few questions, found the poor mother sitting on
the doorstep, with her apron over her head, rocking herself to and fro.

"We have come to help you, mistress," said Sam. "How do you think he is
gone?"

She said, with frequent bursts of grief, that "some days before he had
mentioned having seen white children across the water, who beckoned him
to cross and play; that she, knowing well that they were fairies, or
perhaps worse, had warned him solemnly not to mind them; but that she
had very little doubt that they had helped him over and carried him away
to the forest; and that her husband would not believe in his having
crossed the river."

"Why, it is not knee-deep across the shallow," said Cecil.

"Let us cross again," said Sam; "he _may_ be drowned, but I don't think
it."

In a quarter of an hour from starting, they found, slightly up the
stream, one of the child's socks, which in his hurry to dress he had
forgotten. Here brave Rover took up the trail like a bloodhound, and
before evening stopped at t