stupendous mountains, whose rugged sides rose upward

until the snow-clad peaks pierced the clouds.

There was something awful in these dark solitudes,

quite overwhelming to a youth of Dick's temperament.

His heart began to sink lower and lower every day, and

the utter impossibility of making up his mind what to

do became at length agonizing. To have turned and

gone back the hundreds of miles over which he had

travelled would have caused him some anxiety under

any circumstances, but to do so while Joe and Henri