“Better not, if you value your peace of mind. Since I’ve given up youth’s charming dream of farming—ha! how the words rhyme!—I’ve been as happy as a peg-top,” answered Dick.
The girls smiled.
“Oh yes,” grumbled Oscar, “well enough for you to laugh. You girls never have to [p83] choose or wish—you always have all you want.”
“Oh, come, Willett; little friend there could contradict that, I know,” said Dick. “But we didn’t come up here to discuss our wants and wishes. Suppose we look about a bit, and see the sights. Look, Miss Inna, that jutting rock yonder, by the sea, is Swallow’s Cliff, and behind it is a little bay;” and then he drew her away to look down the Ugly Leap. A dizzy height it was to gaze down from above, with a deep gorge at its foot, in which a stream of water gurgled, said by some to have a connection with Black Hole, the lad told her; over which Inna shuddered and turned away.
Then they all sat down, and lunched in earnest—a late lunch, for the afternoon was fast slipping away—and took more sips from Oscar’s water-bottle. And while they chatted, laughed, and loitered on foot, for it was becoming bitterly cold to sit down any longer, up came the enemy, from the sea it may be, behind their backs; at any rate, it was there with them—ere they realised it the mist was come. Surely the old Tor wasn’t going to turn nasty and ill-natured [p84] to-day, of all days! they said, in startled dismay; and Oscar affirmed he had seen the fog settle and rise, settle and rise, as fickle as any girl’s temper. “’Twas nothing,” he said; “it would lift.”
But it was something, and it did not lift; instead, it shut them in so that they could not see one another’s faces; and oh! the girls’ teeth chattered with cold. Worse, snow began to fall—blinding snow, which enveloped them quite. Well for them that they had put on fur-lined cloaks and overcoats, but——
“I say, we’re in for it!” cried Dick; that was when they stood deep in snow, and the cold was chilling them to the very bone.
“Don’t you think you could steer us down out of this, Willett? You know the old villain better than I do. We shall freeze!”
And Oscar said, “No; better freeze than lose one’s way, and——” They knew he was thinking of the shepherd lad and the Ugly Leap.
“Still, something must be done,” urged Dick; then the two lads made the shivering girls move and spring up and down, and hoped that the storm would clear. But it did not.