great for even Isabel to regard further progress as possible, and in
response to the girl's insistence they had crept in to rest. They had
lost the beaten track long since; neither of them had realized when. But
the certainty that they had done so had had its effect upon Isabel. Her
energies had flagged from the moment that it had dawned upon her. A
deadly tiredness had come over her, a feebleness so complete that Dinah
had had difficulty in getting her into the shelter. Return was utterly
out of the question. They were hopelessly lost, and to wander in that
densely falling snow was to court disaster.

Very thankful Dinah had been to find even so poor a refuge in that waste
of drifting fog; but now as she huddled by Isabel's side it seemed to her
that the relief afforded was but a prolonging of their agony. The cold
was intense. It seemed to penetrate to her very bones, and she knew by
her companion's low moaning that she was suffering keenly also.

Isabel seemed to have sunk into a state of semi-consciousness, and only
now and then did broken words escape her--words scarcely audible to
Dinah, but which testified none the less to the bitterness of despair
that had come upon her.

She sat in a corner of the desolate place with Dinah pressed close to
her, while the snow drifted in through the door-less entrance and
sprinkled them both. But it was the darkness rather than the cold or the
snow that affected the girl as she crouched there with her arms about her
companion, striving to warm and shelter her while she herself felt frozen
to the very heart. It was so terrible, so monstrous, so nerve-shattering.
And the silence that went with it was like a nightmare horror to her
shrinking soul. For all Dinah's sensibilities were painfully on the
alert. No merciful dulness of perception came to her. Responsibility had