I saw Crothers looking up at the white, silky clouds: once he shook his head doubtfully, but I did not ask him his thought. With plenty of company, the mountains did not impress or awe me as on the night of my flight. Once our course dipped into a little valley down which a brook trickled. In the soft earth on either side of it the vigilant Crothers saw footsteps which he said were those of two men. We knew the two men must be the doctor and the colonel. "I should judge from those footprints, though I can't tell precisely," said Crothers, "that we haven't gained anything on them." This was somewhat discouraging, and our enthusiasm did not grow when the path, after leaving the valley, or rather slit in the hills, led up a very steep and long slope. Our muscles relaxed under the strain, and the breath came in irregular puffs. I was very tired, but I was not willing to own it, especially as I saw Grace walking with still vigorous step. She had told the truth when she said she was a better mountaineer than I. The mists thickened. The moon was but a faint glimmer through them, and they drifted like lazy clouds. Our world narrowed again, and instinctively we walked very close together. It was like a fog at sea; the damp of it carried a raw penetrating chill. There was no wind to moan or sing through the ravines; the mountains were silent save for ourselves. Crothers suggested a light, and produced from under his coat the torch with which he had provided himself in view of such emergency. It was a long stick, soaked in some compound of tar and turpentine, and when he lighted one end and held it aloft it burned with energy, casting a bright, cheerful light. Nevertheless we shivered in our clothes; the chill in the air was insistent, and the mist was soaking into the ground and the autumn foliage. All the world seemed to be a-sweat, and, poor woodsman as I was, I knew that this had its perils. Pneumonia is not picturesque, but it is very dangerous. Crothers looked at me several times as if he expected me to make a suggestion, but, though by common consent I was the leader of the party, I waited for him to make it, as he knew more about mountains and forests than I. But we plodded on for a long time before he spoke. Then he announced that we must stop for a while and build a fire. "If we don't," he said, "we'll be soaked through and through with the cold mist, and in another hour some of us will be shaking with the chills and fever." Grace protested against stopping. She was in the greatest alarm lest a tragedy should happen ahead of us, but, while we felt the same fear, we recognized also the truth of the old maxim about the futility of too much haste. I pointed out the dangers to her, and urged that her father probably had sought shelter somewhere before this. She was compelled to yield, not to my arguments necessarily, but to her own judgment. I often think what a jolly world this would be if our judgment and our wishes were always agreed.