ace twice, and he slowly rose to his feet.

"Wants a good start," he muttered, and he was about to throw himself
down when a fresh thought crossed his brain.

"I don't care," he said aloud, as if addressing some one who had spoken;
"think what yer like, I ain't afraid to pitch myself down and go
skidding to the bottom, and get up with all the skin off! I sez he
ain't down there. I never heerd him go, and there's something more than
I knows on. It is a fit, and he's lying up yonder. Bill Gedge, lad,
you're a-going wrong."

He stood trying to pierce the thickening mist, looking as nearly as he
could judge straight upward in the course they had taken, and was about
to start: but, not satisfied, he took out his match-box, struck a light,
and, holding it down, sought for the marks made by the bayonets in the
climb. But there was no sign where he stood, neither was there to his
left; and, taking a few paces to the right, with the rapidly-burning
match close to the snow, the flame was just reaching his fingers when he
uttered a sigh of satisfaction: for, as the light had to be dropped,
there, one after the other, he saw two marks in the freshly-chipped snow
glistening in the faint light. Keeping their direction fresh in his
mind, he stalled upward on his search.

"How far did I come down?" he said to himself. "I reckon 'bout a
hundred yards. Say 'undred and twenty steps."

He went on taking the hundred and twenty paces, and then he stopped
short.

"Must be close here somewhere," he muttered; and he paused to listen,
but there was not a sound.

"Nobody couldn't hear me up here," he thought, and he called his
companion by name, to rouse up strange echoes from close at hand; and
when he changed to whistling, the echoes were sudden and startling in
the extreme.

"It's rum," said Gedge. "He was just in front of me, one minute talking
to me, and then `Ha!' he says, and he was gone."

Gedge took off his helmet, and wiped his wet brow again before replacing
it.

"Ugh, you idjit!" he muttered. "You were right at first. He dropped
down in a sort o' fit from overdoing it--one as took him all at wunst,
and he's lying somewheres about fast asleep, as people goes off in the
snow and never wakes again. He's lying close by here somewheres, and
you ought to have done fust what you're going to do last.

"Mustn't forget where I left you," he muttered as he gave a dig down
with his rifle, driving the bayonet into the sno