heir ring and sounded just as if he had said, "All is lost!"
Becky clung to his side in an anguish of fear, and tried hard to keep
back the tears, but they would come. At last she said:

"Oh, Tom, never mind the bats, let's go back that way! We seem to get
worse and worse off all the time."

"Listen!" said he.

Profound silence; silence so deep that even their breathings were
conspicuous in the hush. Tom shouted. The call went echoing down the
empty aisles and died out in the distance in a faint sound that
resembled a ripple of mocking laughter.

"Oh, don't do it again, Tom, it is too horrid," said Becky.

"It is horrid, but I better, Becky; they might hear us, you know," and
he shouted again.

The "might" was even a chillier horror than the ghostly laughter, it
so confessed a perishing hope. The children stood still and listened;
but there was no result. Tom turned upon the back track at once, and
hurried his steps. It was but a little while before a certain
indecision in his manner revealed another fearful fact to Becky--he
could not find his way back!

"Oh, Tom, you didn't make any marks!"

"Becky, I was such a fool! Such a fool! I never thought we might want
to come back! No--I can't find the way. It's all mixed up."

"Tom, Tom, we're lost! we're lost! We never can get out of this awful
place! Oh, why DID we ever leave the others!"

She sank to the ground and burst into such a frenzy of crying that Tom
was appalled with the idea that she might die, or lose her reason. He
sat down by her and put his arms around her; she buried her face in his
bosom, she clung to him, she poured out her terrors, her unavailing
regrets, and the far echoes turned them all to jeering laughter. Tom
begged her to pluck up hope again, and she said she could not. He fell
to blaming and abusing himself for getting her into this miserable
situation; this had a better effect. She said she would try to hope
again, she would get up and follow wherever he might lead if only he
would not talk like that any more. For he was no more to blame than
she, she said.

So they moved on again--aimlessly--simply at random--all they could do
was to move, keep moving. For a little while, hope made a show of
reviving--not with any reason to back it, but only because it is its
nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age
and familiarity with failure.

By-and-by Tom took Becky's candle and blew it out. This economy meant
so