felt able to get up again, but in a minute or
two Weston held out his hand.

"I fancy that this ridge dies out somewhere to the left. We'll follow
the crest of it until we can get around the end," he said.

They went on very cautiously, though there were times when Ida held
her breath and was glad of the firm grasp that her companion laid on
her arm. She would not look down into the valley, and when she glanced
aside at all it was up at the gleaming snow on the opposite side of
it. She seemed to be walking in mid-air, cut off from the comfortable
security of the solid earth below, and she found the clamor of falling
water that came faintly up to her vaguely reassuring. There had been
an almost appalling silence where she had left her companions beneath
the frozen peaks, but now one could hear the hoarse fret of a rapid on
the river, and this was a familiar sound that she welcomed.

Still her weariness gained on her, and her limbs grew heavier, until
she could scarcely drag herself along. Weston's limp became more
perceptible too, but he went on with an almost cruel persistency, and
forced her forward with his hand on her arm. Sometimes he spoke to
her, and, though his voice was strained, his words were cheering and
compassionate.

At length, the descent they skirted became less steep, and scrambling
down over a broken slope they presently reached the timber--straggling
juniper, and little scattered firs that by and by grew taller and
closer together; and, though the peril was over, it was then that
their real difficulties commenced. The slope was so steep that they
could scarcely keep a footing, and now and then they fell into the
trees. There were places where these grew so close together that they
could scarcely force a passage through, and others where they had gone
down before a screaming gale and lay piled in a tangled chaos over
which it was almost impossible to flounder. It was dark in the timber,
and they could not see the broken ends of the branches that rent their
clothing; but they went on somehow, down and down, until, when they
reached a clearer space where the moonlight shone through, Ida sank
down limply on a fallen tree. Her skirt was rent to tatters, and one
shoe had been torn almost to pieces.

"I simply can't go on," she said.

Weston leaned against a neighboring fir, looking down at her very
compassionately, though she noticed that his face, on which the
moonlight fell, was somewhat drawn and