Beyond you is the wall of rock. Let me try."

For the next ten minutes there was the sound of one struggling to get
through the snow, and then it ended with the hoarse panting of a man
lying exhausted with his efforts.

"Let me come and try now," came in smothered accents.

"It is of no use. The snow was loose at first, but farther on it is
pressed together hard like ice. Try your way."

The scuffling and tearing commenced now to the right.

"Yes; it's quite loose now, and falls down. Ah! _no good_; here is the
solid rock running up as far as I can reach."

"I can hardly breathe. It is growing hotter every moment."

"No; it is cooler here. I can reach right up and stand against the
rock."

The speaker's companion in the terrible peril crept over the snow to his
side and rose to his feet, to find the air purer; and, like a drowning
man who had raised his head for the moment above water, he drank in deep
draughts of the cold, sweet air.

"Hah!" he gasped at last hoarsely, after reaching up as high as he
could, "the rock has saved us for the moment. The snow slopes away from
it like the roof of a shed."

"Yes; if we had been a few feet farther from it we should have been
crushed to death. Let's try and tear a way along by the foot of the
rock."

They tried hard in turn till they were utterly exhausted and lay
panting; but the only result was that the loose snow beneath them became
trampled down. No, not the only result; they increased the space within
what was fast becoming a snow cavern, one of whose walls was the solid
rocky side of the ravine.

"Are we to die like this?"

"Is this to be the end of all our golden hopes? Oh, heaven help us!
What shall we do? The air is growing hotter; we have nearly exhausted
it all, and suffocation is coming on fast. I can't, I won't die yet.
Help! help! help!"

Those three last words came in a hoarse faint wail that sounded
smothered and strange.

"Hush!" cried the other; "be a man. You are killing yourself. The air
is not worse. I can breathe freely still."

There was a horrible pause, and then, in pitiful tones: "I am fighting
down this fearful feeling of cowardice, but it is so hard--so hard to
die so soon. Not twenty yet, and the bright world and all its hopeful
promise before one. How can you keep like that? Are you not afraid to
die?"

"Yes," came in a low, sad whisper; "but we must not die like this. Tell
me you can breathe yet?"

"Ye