"Shout again," urged Helen.
"Let's all shout together!" cried Isadore. "Now!"
They raised their voices in a long, lingering yell. Again and again they repeated it. They thought nothing now of the possibility of attracting the constable and his companions to the scene.
Meanwhile nothing but the echoes replied to their hail. Down there in the chasm Ann Hicks saw no sign of the lost girl. The bottom of the place seemed heaped high with snow.
"She plunged right into the drift, and perhaps she's smothered down there," gasped Ann. "Oh! what shall we do?"
"If it's a deep drift Ruth may not be hurt at all," cried Tom. "Do let me look, Ann. That's a good girl."
The western girl was drawn back and the boy took her place. Bobbins and Ralph Tingley let Tom slide farther over the verge of the precipice than they had Ann.
"She went down feet first," panted Tom. "There isn't an obstruction she could have hit. She must have dropped right into the snowbank in the bottom—Ruth! Ruth Fielding!"
But even his sharp eyes could discover no mark in the snow. Nothing of the lost girl appeared above the drift at the foot of this sheer cliff. She might have been smothered under the snow, as Ann suggested. And yet, that scarcely seemed probable.
Surely the fall into the soft drift could not have injured Ruth fatally. She must have had strength enough to struggle to the surface of the snow.