ys said;
"there may be a shepherd's hut here."

Nothing, however, was seen, save a smooth, white surface of snow.

"What is that?" one exclaimed suddenly. "Look, there is a little red
flag flying down there--come along."

The boys rushed down the hill at full speed.

"Don't all go near the flag," one said; "you may be treading on their
bodies."

They arrived within ten yards of the flag, in which they soon recognised
a red pocket-handkerchief. They were silent now, awestruck at the
thought that their companions were lying dead beneath.

"Perhaps it is not theirs," the eldest of the party said presently.
"Anyhow I had better take it off and carry it home."

Treading cautiously and with a white face, for he feared to feel beneath
his feet one of the bodies of his friends, he stepped, knee-deep in the
snow-drift, to the flag. He took the little stick in his hand to pluck
it up; he raised it a foot, and then gave a cry of astonishment and
started back.

"What is the matter?" the others asked.

"It was pulled down again," he said in awestruck tones. "I will swear
it was pulled down again."

"Oh, nonsense!" one of the others said; "you are dreaming."

"I am not," the first replied positively; "it was regularly jerked in my
hand."

"Can they be alive down there?" one suggested.

"Alive! How can they be alive after five days, twenty feet deep in the
snow? Look at the flag!"

There was no mistake this time; the flag was raised and lowered five or
six times. The boys took to their heels and ran and gathered in a
cluster fifty yards away on the hill-side.

"What can it be?" they asked, looking in each others' pale faces.

The behaviour of the flag seemed to them something supernatural.

"We had better go back and tell them at home," one of them said.

"We can't do that; no one would believe us. Look here, you fellows,"
and he glanced round at the bright sky, "this is nonsense; the flag
could not wave of itself; there must be somebody alive below; perhaps
there is a shepherd's hut quite covered with the drift, and they have
pushed the flag up through the chimney."

The supposition seemed a reasonable one, and a little ashamed of their
panic the group returned towards the flag. The eldest boy again
approached it.

"Go carefully, Tomkins, or you may fall right down a chimney."

The flag was still continuing its up and down movement; the boy
approached and lay down on the snow close to it; then he t