's run
on."

"Run where? You don't know which way. What shall we do, what _shall_ we
do?"

"We'll go this way--we haven't tried it at all. I shouldn't wonder a
bit if the path were right over there where it looks so black. Besides,
we shall hear them calling for us."

Ah, if there had been anybody to tell them! In precisely the other
direction, the picnic party, roused and frightened, were searching every
thicket, and shouting their names at every ravine. Each step the girls
took now sent them so much further away from help.

While they were running on, still hand in hand, Joy heard the most
remarkable sound. It was a laugh from Gypsy--actually a soft, merry
laugh, breaking out like music on the night air, in the dreary place.

"Why, Gypsy Breynton! What can you find to laugh at, I should like to
know?" said Joy, provoked enough to stop crying at very short notice.

"Oh, dear, I really can't help it," apologized Gypsy, choking down the
offending mirth; "but I was thinking--I couldn't help it, Joy, now,
possibly--how mad Francis Rowe will be to think he's got to stop and
help hunt us up!"

"I wonder what that black thing is ahead of us," said Joy, presently.
They were still running on together, but their hands were not joined
just at that moment. Joy was a little in advance.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Gypsy, eyeing it intently. The words were
scarcely off from her lips before she cried out with a loud cry, and
sprang forward, clutching at Joy's dress.

She was too late.

Joy tripped over a mass of briars, fell, rolled heavily--not over upon
the ground, but _off_. Off into horrible, utter darkness. Down, with
outstretched hands and one long shriek.

Gypsy stood as if someone had charmed her into a marble statue, her
hands thrown above her head, her eyes peering into the blank darkness
below.

She stood so for one instant only; then she did what only wild,
impulsive Gypsy would have done. She went directly down after Joy,
clinging with her hands and feet to the side of the cliff; slipping,
rolling, getting to her feet again, tearing her clothes, her hands, her
arms--down like a ball, bounding, bouncing, blinded, bewildered.

If it had been four hundred feet, there is no doubt she would have gone
just the same. It proved to be only ten, and she landed somewhere on a
patch of soft grass, except for her scratches and a bruise or two, quite
unhurt.

Something lay here beside her, flat upon the ground. It