a wreath of vapor, and rise from the mountain's side, and
take him soaring with it--whither? How they would search these bleak
wintry fastnesses for him,--while he was gone sailing with the mist!
What would they say at home and at Birk's Mill? One last thought of the
"pea-fow_el_," and he seemed to slide swiftly away from the world with
the snow.

He was unconscious probably only for a few minutes. When he came to
himself, he found that he was lying, half-submerged in the great drift,
on the slope of the mountain, and the dark, icicle-begirt cliff towered
high above. He stretched his limbs--no bones broken! He could hardly
believe that he had fallen unhurt from those heights. He did not
appreciate how gradually the snow had slidden down. Being so densely
packed, too, it had buoyed him up, and kept him from dashing against the
sharp, jagged edges of the rock. He had lost consciousness in the jar
when the moving mass was abruptly arrested by a transverse elevation of
the ground. He was still a little dizzy and faint, but otherwise
uninjured.

Now a great perplexity took hold on him. How was he to make his way back
up the mountain, he asked himself, as he looked at the inaccessible
cliffs looming high into the air. All the world around him was
unfamiliar. Even his wide wanderings had never brought him into this
vast, snowy, trackless wilderness, that stretched out on every side. He
would be half the day in finding the valley road that led to Birk's
Mill. He rose to his feet, and gazed about him in painful indecision.
The next moment a thrill shot through him, to which he was
unaccustomed. He had never before shaken except with the cold,--but this
was fear.

For he heard voices! Not from the cliffs above,--but from below! Not
from the dense growth of young pines on the slope of the mountain,--but
from the depths of the earth beneath! He stood motionless, listening
intently, his eyes distended, and his heart beating fast.

All silence! Not even the wind stirred in the pine thicket. The snow lay
heavy among the dark green branches, and every slender needle was
encased in ice. Rick rubbed his eyes. It was no dream. There was the
thicket; but whose were the voices that had rung out faintly from
beneath it?

A crowd of superstitions surged upon him. He cast an affrighted glance
at the ghastly snow-covered woods and sheeted earth. He was remembering
fireside legends, horrible enough to raise the hair on a sophisticated,
e