He stood, long after Ted had started upward, watching also, and thinking how like these billowy sand-banks were to a drowned woman's clothes. Some goddess of the earth, surely, lay dead there, her body compassed by the hills. "I say! Aren't you coming?" came his companion's shout. "We haven't time to lose. Look there!" A vivid flash of lightning shot beyond the deep bank into the rolling clouds that were coming up swiftly with the rising wind; and, more quickly than one would have expected, a low mutter of thunder caught the crags in monotonous echoes. "Go on! I'll soon catch you up," shouted Ned in return. And he did so; for there was a lightness, a certain stress of action about his every movement which differentiated him from his companion's more deliberate steadiness. The wind rose at every gust, and in the fast growing dusk, the sheep sought shelter behind rocks and boulders for the night. Yet still the downward path could not be found. "We had best follow the stream yonder," said Ned at last. "It will be longer, but it will take us down eventually, and I don't want to camp out with my pipe in that storm." The first drop or two of rain emphasised his advice; but it was no easy task to follow it with the mist closing in on all sides. Then darkness came, bringing a perfect deluge with it. They could scarcely see the stones at their feet, except when, with the sudden summer lightning, the whole world of hill and dale and sea was revealed to them for a second, then shut out again as if in obedience to the immediate roll-call of the thunder. But they were young, and it was soft, warm rain; so, with many a slip and tumble, and many a laugh, they made way somehow, pausing at length to leeward of a large rock to light a fresh pipe and look at the time. "Half past ten!" exclaimed Ted, "who'd have thought it!" He spoke joyously, for his pulses were bounding with the vitality due to the exercise of mind and body. "I should," replied Ned; "I'm beastly hungry. However"--here a brilliant flash gave them the world again, "I believe that's the bottom down there." The vision of a stream in flood surging through a low-lying wooded valley not far beneath them, was certainly the bottom, but it was nearer twelve o'clock than eleven ere they found level footfall, and that only on the brink of the stream. To cross, or not to cross became the question. They referred it to the next flash of lightning; a long wait in the darkness, for the storm was passing, the rain had ceased. When it came, it showed them an oasis of field, a clump of trees, and something amongst them which might or might not be a human habitation. The point was settled, however, the next moment by the sudden twinkle of a wandering light quite close on the other side. It stopped dead at their view halloo, then retreated, evidently at a run, to reappear, nevertheless, almost immediately in company with a remonstrant voice, clear, pleasant, decided.