“Ruth!  Ruth!” called Tom, charging back toward the broken snow-drift.

But Bobbins caught and held him.  “Don’t make a fool of yourself, old man!” commanded the big fellow.  “You can’t help her by falling over the cliff yourself.”

“Oh! how deep can that place be?” gasped Ralph Tingley.

“What will mother say?” cried his brother.

“Ruth!  Ruth!” shouted Ann Hicks, and dropped on her knees to crawl to the edge.

“You’ll be down there yourself, Ann!” exclaimed Helen, sobbing.

“A couple of you useless boys grab me by the ankles,” commanded the western girl.  “Come! take a good hold.  Now let me see——­”

She hung half over the verge of the rock.  The fall was sheer for fifty feet at least.  It was a narrow cut in the hill, with apparently unscalable sides and open only toward the lake.

“I—­I don’t see a thing,” panted the girl.

“Shout again,” urged Helen.

“Let’s all shout together!” cried Isadore.  “Now!”

They raised their voices in a long, lingering yell.  Again and again they repeated it.  They thought nothing now of the possibility of attracting the constable and his companions to the scene.

Meanwhile nothing but the echoes replied to their hail.  Down there in the chasm Ann Hicks saw no sign of the lost girl.  The bottom of the place seemed heaped high with snow.

“She plunged right into the drift, and perhaps she’s smothered down there,” gasped Ann.  “Oh! what shall we do?”

“If it’s a deep drift Ruth may not be hurt at all,” cried Tom.  “Do let me look, Ann.  That’s a good girl.”

The western girl was drawn back and the boy took her place.  Bobbins and Ralph Tingley let Tom slide farther over the verge of the precipice than they had Ann.

“She went down feet first,” panted Tom.  “There isn’t an obstruction she could have hit.  She must have dropped right into the snowbank in the bottom—­Ruth!  Ruth Fielding!”

But even his sharp eyes could discover no mark in the snow.  Nothing of the lost girl appeared above the drift at the foot of this sheer cliff.  She might have been smothered under the snow, as Ann suggested.  And yet, that scarcely seemed probable.

Surely the fall into the soft drift could not have injured Ruth fatally.  She must have had strength enough to struggle to the surface of the snow.

Her disappearance was a most mysterious thing.  When Tom crept back from the brink of the precipice and stood on his feet again, they all stared at one another in growing wonder.

“What could have happened to her down there?” groaned Helen, her own amazement stifling her sobs.

CHAPTER XVI

HIDE AND SEEK

Ruth had fallen with but a single shriek.  From top to bottom of the precipice had been such a swift descent that she could not cry out a second time.  And the great bank of snow into which she had plunged did—­as Ann suggested—­smother her.