"Oh, I wouldn't think of going there now," responded Alice. "I mean to branch off on the new path I spoke of."
The day was pleasant, but there was the hint of a storm in the feeling of the air and in the clouds, and the hint was borne out a little later, for a fine snow began sifting down.
The girls kept on, however though Ruth wanted to turn back at the first white flake.
"There's going to be a storm," she declared.
"What of it?" asked Alice, with a merry laugh. "It will be all the more fun!"
But a little later, when the wind suddenly sprang into fury, and lashed the flakes into their faces with cutting force, even Alice was ready to turn back.
"Come on," she cried to her sister. "We'd better not go to the snow grotto—that was a natural curiosity I wanted to show you. But we'll have to wait until another time."
"I should think so!" exclaimed Ruth. "This is terrible! Oh, suppose we should be lost?"
"How can we be, when all we have to do is to follow the path back to Elk Lodge?"
Alice thought it would be as easily done as she had said, and Ruth trusted to the fact that her sister had been that way on a previous occasion. But neither of them realized the full force of the storm, nor how easy it was to mistake the way in blinding snow.