d
his biscuits and tea. Why be frightened? It was absurd. But she was
frightened, horribly, harrowingly. The great, grim rock masses seemed
to be shaking with silent laughter. She began to run again. She was very
cold, and a piercing wind had sprung up. She kept on walking, doggedly,
reasoning with herself quite calmly, and proud of her calmness. Which
proves how terrified she really was. Then the snow came, not slowly,
not gradually, but a blanket of it, as it does come in the mountains,
shutting off everything. And suddenly Fanny's terror vanished. She felt
quite free from weariness. She was alive and tingling to her fingertips.
The psychology of fear is a fascinating thing. Fanny had reached
the second stage. She was quite taken out of herself. She forgot her
stone-bruised feet. She was no longer conscious of cold. She ran now,
fleetly, lightly, the ground seeming to spur her on. She had given up
the trail completely now. She told herself that if she ran on, down,
down, down, she must come to the valley sometime. Unless she was turned
about, and headed in the direction of one of those hideous chasms. She
stopped a moment, peering through the snow curtain, but she could see
nothing. She ran on lightly, laughing a little. Then her feet met a
projection, she stumbled, and fell flat over a slab of wood that jutted
out of the ground. She lay there a moment, dazed. Then she sat up, and
bent down to look at this thing that had tripped her. Probably a tree
trunk. Then she must be near timberline. She bent closer. It was a rough
wooden slab. Closer still. There were words carved on it. She lay flat
and managed to make them out painfully.

"Here lies Sarah Cannon. Lay to rest, and died alone, April 26, 1893."

Fanny had heard the story of Sarah Cannon, a stern spinster who had
achieved the climb to the Peak, and who had met with mishap on the down
trail. Her guide had left her to go for help. When the relief party
returned, hours later, they had found her dead.

Fanny sprang up, filled with a furious energy. She felt strangely light
and clear-headed. She ran on, stopped, ran again. Now she was
making little short runs here and there. It was snowing furiously,
vindictively. It seemed to her that she had been running for hours. It
probably was minutes. Suddenly she sank down, got to her feet again,
stumbled on perhaps a dozen paces, and sank down again. It was as though
her knees had turned liquid. She lay there, with her eyes