He knew that he and Biddy were destined to drink that cup of bitterness to the dregs ere the night passed.

CHAPTER XX

THE VISION OF GREATHEART

The darkness of the night lay like a black pall upon the mountain.  The snow was falling thickly, and ever more thickly.  It drifted in upon Dinah, as she crouched in the shelter of an empty shed that had been placed on that high slope for the protection of sheep from the spring storms.  They had come upon this shelter just as the gloom had become too 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 awakened in her a nervous energy that made her realize the awfulness of their position with appalling vividness.  That they could possibly survive the night she did not believe.  And Death—­Death in that fearful darkness—­was a terror from which she shrank almost in panic.

That she retained command of her quivering nerves was due solely to the fact of Isabel’s helplessness—­Isabel’s dependence upon her.  She knew that while she had any strength left, she must not give way.  She must be brave.  Their sole chance of rescue hung upon that.