"This will never do! Heaven help us if he cracks up!" He waited for the weary Senior, and then said gently, "Pace too hot, old fellow?" "Rather. So sorry, but you seem to run almost." "Run!" smiled Acton, bitterly. "Why, we're not doing a mile an hour. Put your heart into it, Jack, and for Heaven's sake don't let me get too much in front!" "All serene!" said Senior, gamely. To Acton's intense alarm, the snow had recommenced, and the wind swept it down the fells full into their faces. Acton was afraid that he might make a mistake if the snow became so heavy as to blot out the landscape, and, knowing that to do so might have terrible consequences, he nervously forced the pace. Senior responded gamely. "Keep well behind, old man. You'll dodge the snow better. Can you do a wee sprint? We're not far from the top of the ridge, and then we've only to work down the hill and bear to the left, and there we are." "Only!" said Senior, wearily. "How far?" "A bare mile. Step it out for all you're worth." By this time it was obvious that the storm had recommenced in all its fury, and Acton, in an ecstasy of horror and anxiety lest he should turn the shoulder of the hill too late to see anything of the farm, almost ran forward. He had thrust out his head, and his eyes anxiously peered forward. They were now almost on the top of the shoulder of the fell. Acton turned round with eagerness. "Five minutes more and we're---- He's gone!" Senior, indeed, was not in sight. With a groan of despair, Acton ran back down the slope. "Jack! Jack! Jack!" he howled above the wind, "Where are you?" There was no reply "He's lost!" Further down the slope ran Acton, shouting into the storm. He heard nothing; not a sound. Then, and his heart almost burst with joy, his eye caught sight of a moving, staggering figure, drifting aimlessly across his path. Senior, half his senses beaten out of him by cold, wet, the wind, and lack of food, looked at the screaming Acton with uncomprehending eyes, and was aimlessly shaking off his grasp to lounge easily to death. "He _has_ cracked up," said Acton, in despair, and he gripped the half-senseless youth with frenzied strength. "This is the way you're to go--with me!" he yelled. Half-dragging, half-coaxing, uttering strange promises, to which Senior smiled stupidly, Acton regained those few but terrible yards to the top of the ridge. Then his heart almost died within him: there was nothing to be seen, as, half-blinded by the snow, he tried to peer down the valley. "Nothing!" Senior, bereft of his companion's arm, had sunk down happily upon the snow and looked at Acton, stupidly trying to make head or tail out of the situation. His face was darkly flushed; his lips were swollen; and his eyes were heavy with sleep.