He was having his adventure and he did not like it, but across his troubled thoughts words of Theresa came, bracing him to courage. "I hope I'm brave," she said to him one day, inflecting her voice inquiringly. "I hope so, too," he answered, and felt a pang. "I like brave people," she said. "I like them to be brave and clever." "Not good?" he asked. "Oh--good----" That was a lesser virtue. He was not good, nor clever, nor brave, but he would endure, and all night long he sat there, trying to control his dread of the mist and what lay beyond it, stifling the screams that threatened when a stone fell, crashing, dropping from rock to rock, and, hundreds of feet below, breaking itself into ultimate fragments on the screes. "Not again," he prayed. "Not again." So he might fall, but he must not, he would not, and he sat farther back upon his ledge, gripping the wet heather. He thought of Nancy, of Grace and Theresa in their beds: Nancy, with her hand under her cheek, and the humorous, half-mocking smile on her lips, even in sleep; Grace, with her nose in the pillow, and Theresa widespread, tossing her tawny head. Heaven keep them and him! If only the darkness had not been so thick--thick, yet unsteady, promising cracks of light which did not come, and, as he grew more dazed, taking unwelcome shapes of small and evil things, of things nameless, gigantic, formless, yet hideous in suggestion, that came slyly through the folds of mist to push him from his place. Only with a wrenching effort of will could he drive them back, and as they went he thought he heard them chuckling. And again they came with their wavering, softly threatening movements; he strained his eyes for them, there was a terrible expanded feeling in his ears, and the mist and darkness were weighted with horror which pressed about him. His tired eyelids drooped, and he may have slept, but if he did he found no relief from fear; sleeping and waking he was stalked by ugly visions, and he was cold. He thought of the people he had seen shivering in winter streets; so this was how they felt in their rags. Perhaps, too, they had this dreadful vacancy of body, which was not hunger, but resulted from it so that now and then he seemed to be floating in mid-air, a man without a frame, compelled to drive his numbed fingers into the wet earth to bring himself back to a sense of solidity and self. But somehow the night wore through, and with eyes that were wearied with straining past the dark, that heavy curtain seemed at last to be growing thin. It was still black, but the texture of it was changing. A little breeze went by, like a herald bird promising the day. There came a fresh smell of wind and earth. Slowly the night was mastered.