“I saw it coming,” gasped Dan.  “Look!” and Kitty looked across the land stretching below, and saw rain in a dense column rushing towards them, driven by a squall which dashed it into them pitilessly.

In little more than a moment the whole place had changed from a sunny, idyllic little paradise to a bleak, howling wilderness, lonely, weird, exposed to all the worst storms of heaven.

“Where are the others?” gasped Kitty, seizing some of the packages to run with them to the cart.

“I told them not to climb up here again, but to start for home and we would overtake them as quickly as we could.  It wasn’t raining then, or I’d have told them to run to the little shanty; but I should think they’d have the sense to do that,” said Dan.

“Oh yes, I expect they are all right.  Now then, run, but run carefully,” added Kitty.  “All the cups are in that basket, and Aunt Pike will be very angry if we break any.”

But it was not easy to run at all, or even to hurry down that rugged slope, while carrying five baskets and a rug or two, with a squall catching them at every turn, and the short, dry grass becoming as slippery as glass with the rain; but at long last they reached the foot and the little hut, and there they found Betty struggling with all her might to get Mokus between the shafts of the cart.

“He will have to be taken out again, I expect,” said Dan in an aside to Kitty.  “She has probably done up every strap wrongly.  It is good of her, though, to try.”

“I am glad she made Tony stand in under shelter,” said Kitty thankfully, as her eye fell on her little brother in the doorway of the hut.  “Where is Anna?  I suppose she is inside.”

“You bet,” said Dan shortly.  “Anna knows how to take care of herself.”

But Anna was not in the shanty, or anywhere within reach of their shouts.

“I expect she is ever so far towards home by now,” said Betty absently, quite absorbed in the interest of harnessing Mokus.  “She started to walk home as fast as ever she could.  I called to her to wait, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“Oh, well, it’s all right; she can’t miss the road, and we shall soon overtake her,” said Dan.  “Now then, in you get.”

It was great fun packing themselves into the cart.  Betty and Tony, in great spirits, sat in the bottom of it, with a rug drawn over them like a tent, and two little peepholes to peer through, and were as happy and warm as could be.  Kitty and Dan sat upon the seat with the other rug round their shoulders, and the moment they were ready and had gathered up the reins, Mokus, who had been standing flapping his long ears crossly when the rain struck him particularly smartly, started off at a really quick trot, which covered the ground rapidly, but rattled and jolted the cart to such an extent that it was all Dan and Kitty could do to keep their seats, while as for the two in the bottom of the cart, they were tossed about