e _may_ find our way somehow; but--"

"You mean," said Power, with strange calmness, "that there are lots of
precipices about, and that shepherds have several times been lost on
these hills?"

"Let's hope that the mist will clear away, then," said Walter; "anyhow,
let's get on the grass, and off these awkward boulders, before we are
surrounded."

"By all means," said Kenrick; "charges of cloud-cavalry are all very
well in their way; but--"

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

IN THE CLOUDS.

The three boys scrambled with all their speed, Walter helping the other
two down the vast primeval heap of many-tinted rock-fragments which form
the huge summit of Appenfell, and found themselves again on the short
slippery grass, hardened with recent frosts, that barely covered the
wave-like sweep of the hill-side. Meanwhile, the vast dense masses of
white cloud gathered below them, resting here and there in the hollows
of the mountains like gigantic walls and bastions, and leaning against
the abrupter face of the precipice in one great unbroken barrier of
opaque, immaculate, impenetrable pearl. As you looked upon it the chief
impression it gave you was one of immense thickness and crushing weight.
It seemed so compressed and impermeable that one could not fancy how
even a thunderbolt could shatter it, or the wildest blast of any
hurricane dissipate its enormous depth. But as yet it had not enveloped
the peaks themselves. On them the sun yet shone, and where the boys
stood they were still bathed in the keen yet blue and sunny air,
islanded far up above the noiseless billows of surging cloud.

This was not for long. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the clouds
stole upon them--reached out white arms and enfolded them in sudden
whirls of thin and smoke-like mist; eddied over their heads and round
their feet; swathed them at last as in a funeral pall, blotting from
their sight every object save wreaths of dank vapour, rendering wholly
uncertain the direction in which they were moving, and giving a sense of
doubt and danger to every step they took. Kenrick had only told the
master who had given them leave of absence from dinner that they meant
to go a long walk. He had not mentioned Appenfell, not from any want of
straightforwardness, but because they thought that it might sound like a
vainglorious attempt, and they did not want to talk about it until they
had really accomplished it. But in truth if they had mentioned this as
their d