for the
afternoon was fast slipping away--and took more sips from Oscar's
water-bottle. And while they chatted, laughed, and loitered on foot, for
it was becoming bitterly cold to sit down any longer, up came the enemy,
from the sea it may be, behind their backs; at any rate, it was there
with them--ere they realised it the mist was come. Surely the old Tor
wasn't going to turn nasty and ill-natured to-day, of all days! they
said, in startled dismay; and Oscar affirmed he had seen the fog settle
and rise, settle and rise, as fickle as any girl's temper. "'Twas
nothing," he said; "it would lift."

But it was something, and it did not lift; instead, it shut them in so
that they could not see one another's faces; and oh! the girls' teeth
chattered with cold. Worse, snow began to fall--blinding snow, which
enveloped them quite. Well for them that they had put on fur-lined
cloaks and overcoats, but----

"I say, we're in for it!" cried Dick; that was when they stood deep in
snow, and the cold was chilling them to the very bone.

"Don't you think you could steer us down out of this, Willett? You know
the old villain better than I do. We shall freeze!"

And Oscar said, "No; better freeze than lose one's way, and----" They
knew he was thinking of the shepherd lad and the Ugly Leap.

"Still, something must be done," urged Dick; then the two lads made the
shivering girls move and spring up and down, and hoped that the storm
would clear. But it did not.

Would anyone come to find them? they wondered.

"Well, I'll make the attempt to go down and get a lantern, and bring
back someone," volunteered Oscar at last. "I don't mind for myself, but
I can't play guide for----"

"Ay, I know," agreed Dick; "to be hampered with other people's lives is
a great responsibility. Well, take your own life in your hands and go,
and I'd take mine and go with you; but----"

"You stay there with the girls," growled Oscar, and gripped their hands,
as in parting, all the way round.

They let him go a few steps away, and his shadowy form was lost. The
girls clung to Dick, too cold, too scared, too much as in a dreadful
dream, to cry--ay, too much benumbed. The boy shouted, Oscar responded;
once and again shouts were exchanged, then came a scream--a scream so
shrill that it seemed to cleave their poor failing hearts in two--and
then silence, blank silence, save for the howl of the wind as it whirled
the snow. Dick shouted himself hoarse, but the