And the girl sat down on a fragment of rock which jutted from a bluff stony Tor rising overhead, and began to weep. And then there forced itself on Ethel’s mind the dreadful thought that they had perhaps really been walking in a circle until their forces were spent, and might die of fatigue, cold, and even hunger before they should be discovered. Who could tell when the fog would disperse! The mist might overhang the lofty table-land of the moor for whole days, possibly for weeks, cutting the lost ones as completely off from succour as some shipwrecked mariner on his desolate isle. No sound floated to Ethel’s ears as she listened long and eagerly. ‘Don’t cry, Betty; don’t cry. Something‒I know not what‒tells me that we shall get through this safely yet,’ said Ethel, as she too took her seat upon the rock, and laid her hand kindly on that of her young companion. But Betty only blubbered the more furiously. ‘’Tain’t so much for me, miss!’ she said. ‘It be my fault, every bit on’t. I brought you here. And Lenny‒and mother’‒‒ The train of ideas thus conjured up acted so strongly on the untutored imagination of Betty Mudge, that she wept so loudly and dolefully that her wails re-echoed through the solitary waste. What was that? Surely a human voice calling aloud at some distance through the fog, as if in answer to Betty’s inarticulate plaint. Yes, there was no mistake this time. It was the hearty halloo of a deep voice, and the words were: ‘Ho! I say, there! What ails you? Anything wrong?’ ‘We be lost in fog!’ called out the girl by way of answer. ‘It’s a woman or a child,’ exclaimed another voice from the mist. ‘Push on, Bates! The cry came from this direction to the left.’ And presently, bursting through the floating wreaths of vapour, appeared the figures of two men, the shorter and sturdier of whom, a gamekeeper by his velveteen coat and leathern gaiters, and the metal dog-whistle at his button-hole, led a pony with a creel strapped to the saddle-bow. ‘Here they are, my Lord!’ ejaculated this functionary, as he caught sight of the forlorn two upon the rock. The gentleman to whom he spoke came hurrying up across the stony ground, a fishing-rod in his hand. ‘Don’t be frightened, my little maid,’ he called out cheerily to Betty, who wept more unrestrainedly than ever, now that help was near; and then, catching a glimpse of Ethel’s pale beautiful face as she looked up, he exclaimed: ‘Why, this is a lady‒here!’ and instinctively he raised his hat. ‘Stop! It is Miss Gray from the village, if I am not mistaken.‒You must let me see you safely off the moor. I live near, at High Tor; though I daresay you do not know me, Miss Gray. I have seen you at church.’