shivered as she thought of the danger. It would be
growing dusk before her father began to climb, and who could say what
might happen?

She hurried on to the place at which she always met her father. When she
had crossed the brook that parted the field with the gap from the field
preceding it, Anna stood still in dismay. The hedge was gone, and so was
a good strip of the field it had bordered.

[Sidenote: A Landslip]

There had already been a landslip.

Anna had learned wisdom by her mischance yesterday, and she went on
slowly and cautiously till she drew near the edge; then she knelt down
on the grass, and, creeping along on her hands and knees, she peered
over the broken, slippery edge. The landslip seemed to have reached
midway down the cliff, but the rain had washed the earth and rubbish to
one side.

So far as Anna could make out, the way up, half-way, was as firm as
ever; then there came a heap of debris from the fall of earth, and then
the bare rock rose to the top, upright and dreadful.

Anna's head turned dizzy as she looked down the precipice, and she
forced herself to crawl backward from the crumbling edge only just in
time, for it seemed to her that some mysterious power was beckoning her
from below.

When she got on her feet she stood and wondered what was to be done. How
was she to warn her father of this danger?

She looked at the sun; it was still high up in the sky, so she had some
hours before her. There was no other way to Malans but this one, unless
by going back half-way to Seewis, to where a path led down to Pardisla,
and thence into the Landquart valley, where the high-road went on to
Malans, past the corner where the Landquart falls into the Rhine. Anna
had learned all this as a child from the big map which hung in the
dining-room at the inn. But on the map it looked a long, long way to the
Rhine valley, and she had heard her father tell her Aunt Christina that
she must take the diligence at Pardisla; it would be too far, he said,
to walk to Landquart, and Anna knew that Malans was farther still. She
stood wondering what could be done.

In these last four years she had become by degrees penetrated with a
sense of her own utter uselessness, and she had gradually sunk into a
melancholy condition. She did only what she was told to do, and she
always expected to be told how to do it.

Her first thought now was, how could she get help or advice? she knew
only two people who could help he