And here and there slight signs of disturbance were just visible, though only the eye of a shepherd, who had often tracked his lost sheep in the fields and fells of snow, could have detected them.
Now they have reached the Gap, and they look with inward misgivings at the snowy battlements by which it was defended—rampart, curtain, and fosse. However, borne by their strong limbs and helped by their strong staves, and impelled by their strong motive, the bold young men and the brave old man forced their way through.
On the further side of the barrier there were two mountain roads branching off from that which they had been following, the one leading up the gorge to Scarf Beck Farm, the other winding up the side of the Old Man. The party stop to consider. Mark Wilson thinks he has grounds for the belief that his friend would take the way of the mountain; but as his suspicions are vague, founded only upon the hints and half-revealings of the previous day, which he had painfully put together, he could give his companions no reason for the course which he intended to pursue.
"Seems to me," said Geordie Garthwaite, "that young master is kind, like, to Scarf Beck Bella—and so, like enough, he's gone there. That's an old man's mind upon it."
"No," said Mark, "I must search the mountain's side before I go home."
"Then it's my belief," replied Geordie, "that we shall never get home at all, if we do the like of that. There's snow enough in places to bury us all, like sheep. But, stay! What's this, again?"
And sure enough there were undeniable footmarks plodding up the path which led to the old workings of a deserted mine, high up on the mountainside.
Geordie stooped down and examined. "It's a man's foot, however, turning up here; and the prints are part filled again with new snow, looser and softer than the old. So it's done since evening, when there was the great fall. We'll try the mountain, master."
But those tracks, all the while, were but the tracks of Tim o' the Brooms.
Poor Chance! Thou dost not know how near is help, and how it is already turning away and leaving thee in thy distress. And yet thy poor unenlightened instinct is doing wonders of self-sacrificing devotion, and of beautiful, tender skill. Thou halt dug away the snow which had closed over thy unconscious master; thou hast licked his pale forehead; licked his livid face over and over again; licked his stiffening wrists: takes his hand in thy mouth in thy agonized efforts to rouse him from his strange, cold sleep; and then, lying down close to his side, thou hast moaned and whined to the winds. If there be a heart yet beating feebly within that rigid form, it is because thy anxious efforts have not suffered the last faint glow of animal heat to die out.