uch rapid progress that Dale was left behind; and he was about to shout
to Saxe not to hurry, when he saw that the boy was waiting some eighty
or ninety yards in advance, and high up above the bottom of the gorge
along which Dale had proceeded in a slower and surer way.

Dale went on till he was right below the boy, and then stopped to wipe
his forehead.

"Let's get back, Saxe," he said: "there may be traces of this narrow
crack going right round the mountain. Ready?"

There was no answer.

"Saxe!"

"Yes," rather hoarsely.

"Come down now, and let's go back."

There was again no answer.

"Why don't you come down?" said Dale.

"I--I'll come down directly."

"Curious place--very curious place!" said Dale, looking about him at the
solid walls of rock. "I shouldn't wonder if we came upon crevices
similar to those which we found lower down in the sides of the glacier:
perhaps we may hit upon a cavern that we can explore. I must bring
Melchior up here: he has a nose like a dog for holes of that kind."

He stood peering here and there with his back to Saxe, and did not turn
for a few minutes. When at last he did, he saw that the boy was in
precisely the same position.

"Why, Saxe, my lad," he said, "what are you doing? Why don't you come
down?"

The lad turned his head very slowly till he could look down, and fixed
his eyes upon his companion in a peculiar, wild way.

"What's the matter?--Giddy?"

"No."

"Come down, then."

"I--can't," said the boy slowly.

"Then climb on a little farther, and come down there."

"No: I can't move."

"Nonsense. This isn't a loadstone mountain, and you're not iron. Come
down."

"I--I did try," said Saxe; "but I had to make a jump to get here, and I
can't jump back: there's nothing to take hold of."

Dale scanned the position anxiously, seeing now for the first time that
the rough angles and ridge-like pieces of rock along which the boy had
made his way ceased about five feet from where he stood, and that he
must have jumped on to a narrow piece of stone not a foot long and
somewhere about a third of that width; and though, in the vast chasm in
which they both were, the height above him, where Saxe was
spread-eagled, as it were, against the perpendicular rock, looked
perfectly insignificant, he was close upon a hundred feet up, and a fall
would have been very serious, if not fatal.

"You foolish fellow!" Dale said cheerfully, so as not to alarm him at a
ti