Listen! I can hear his voice—only it sounds such a weak voice. That is because I am getting so weak now myself, though I manage to call back, that Griffiths may know just where we are....
Griffiths has reached us. Griffiths is attending to poor old Smith. Now he's got his arm round me. Griffiths is pouring a cordial down my throat that brings life back into me. I can feel my heart beating again. I'm better now. I'll shake Griffiths by the hand. I dare say I shall by-and-by. But this is the hand of Smith's Sister!
The strain of this theatrical style, and of the present tense, is more than I can stand any longer, so I hope it is quite clear to you what had happened. Just a few words to sum up.
When the rescue party formed by Mr. Griffiths—as soon as it was obvious that Smith and I had lost ourselves—set out, Smith's sister set out with them. Griffiths ordered her back. She went back, collared a lantern and a flask all to herself (in view of the party separating—what a thoughtful girl!), followed and rejoined them. When they stopped and halloaed to find whereabouts we were, he ordered her back again, but not until she had heard the hasty consultation which resulted in the party sticking to the safer way to us. She heard about the "two ways," and she dared the one that everybody else was afraid of. The ascent up the mountain's face was suggested, but only Smith's sister had the pluck to make it. This was the girl we had scorned and laughed at. This was the girl whom we had told to stop at home and play with the chickens!
About an hour after she reached us with the "first help" that may have saved our lives, we saw the lights of Griffith's party on the crest above us. We exchanged shouts, and they let down a rope at once, and hauled us up. Long before this, Smith's sister had bound up his injured ankle neatly and lightly with her own handkerchief and our handkerchiefs.
You should have seen the farmer's face—and, indeed, the faces of all the others too—when they realised how she had reached us.
It is all very well for her to say that she didn't know what she was doing—that she couldn't have done in the light what she did in the dark. All I am concerned with is the fact that she did do what I have told you she did.
Referring to the proposition I laid down soon after I started—about there being real grit in girls after all—you will understand what I meant when I wind up my yarn with the familiar quotation, Q. E. D.