and lightning is not so bad now. Come on! Let's go!"

Timidly the two girls crept out. But the rain had washed their path
away and they could barely take a step where so short a time before
they seemed to walk in safety.

"Don't give up!" Tavia urged Dorothy. "We must get to the top."

But the stones would slide away and the young trees, loosed by the
heavy rain, would pull up at the roots.

"Try this way," suggested Tavia, taking another line from that which
the girls knew ran to the mountain top.

This proved to be safer in footing at least. The rocks did not fall
with such force, and the trees were stronger to hold on to.

But where was that path taking them? Both girls shouted continually,
hoping to make the others hear, but no welcome answer came back to them.

Then they realized the truth. They were lost!

Night was coming, and such a night!

On a mountain top, in a thunder storm, with darkness falling!

The girls never knew just what they did in that awful hour, but it
seemed afterwards that a whole lifetime had been lost with them in that
storm. So far from every one on earth! Not even a bird to break that
dreadful black solitude!

And the others?

The storm, violent as it was, did not deter them from searching for
Dorothy and Tavia. Miss Crane had shouted her throat powerless, and
the others had not been less active. But by the strange circumstances
that always lead the lost from their seekers, both parties had followed
different directions, and at last, as night came on, Miss Crane was
obliged to lead her weeping charges down Mount Gabriel and leave the
two lost ones behind.

CHAPTER XVI

WHAT VIOLA DID

"When we get to the top we will surely be able to see our way down,"
declared Tavia. "So let us keep right on, even though this is not the
path we came up."

"But the others will not find us this way," sighed Dorothy, "and isn't
it getting dark!"

"Never mind. There must be some way of getting out of the woods. No
mountains for mine. Good flat _terra firma_ is good enough for
Chrissy."

Dorothy tried to be cheerful--there were no bears surely on these
peaks, and perhaps no tramps--what would they be doing up there?

"Now!" cried Tavia, "I see a way down! Keep right close to me and you
will be all right! Yes, and I see a light! There's a hut at this end
of the mountain."

To say that the lost Glenwood girls slid down the steep hill would
hardly express the kind