e felt sure he could have heard it. But none did.

Up the steep ravine he went, finding the going easier than through the
spongy swamps below. About half-way up, just where the juniors ten
hours ago had decided to turn back, as he looked up, he saw what seemed
like clear sky through a frame in the mist. Was it clearing after all?
Yes. The higher he got the more the mist broke up into fleeting clouds,
which swept aside every few moments and let in a dim glimmer of
moonlight on the scene.

At the top of the ravine he shouted again; but all was still. Even the
wind was dying down, and the rain fell with a deadened sob at his feet.
Three o'clock! Wisdom had told him, the day they had been up there,
that the top was only three-quarters of an hour beyond where he stood.
Something still cried "Excelsior" within him, and without halting longer
than to satisfy himself by another shout, he started on.

How he achieved that tremendous climb he could never say. The clouds
had rolled off, and the moonlight lit up the rocks almost like day.
Never once did he pull up or flag in his ascent. He even ceased to
shout.

Presently there loomed before him, gleaming in the moonlight, the cairn.
For the first time in its annals, a Fellsgarth boy had got to the top
of Hawk's Pike.

But, so far from elation at the glory of the achievement, Rollitt
uttered a groan of dismay when he looked round and found no one there
after all. That he would find Fisher minor there he had never doubted;
and now--all this had been time lost.

Without waiting to heed the glorious moonlight prospect over lake and
hill, he turned almost savagely, and scrambled down the crags. It was
perilous work--more perilous than the scramble up. But Rollitt did not
think of danger, and therefore perhaps did not meet it. In half an hour
he was down on the bog--and in an hour after, just as a faint break in
the east gave warning that the night was gone, he stood bruised and
panting at the foot of the gorge on the second ridge.

He was too dispirited to shout now. It had not been given to him after
all to rescue his friend. He would have done better if he had never--

There was a big boulder just ahead, poised almost miraculously on its
edge, on the sloping hill-side. It looked as if a moderate blast of
wind would send it headlong to the bottom. But it had stood there for
centuries, a shelter for sheep in winter from the snow and hail.

What made Rollitt bo