He was back in a minute with a knobby sack of something very heavy, that rattled dully when he threw it in.  “All right,” he called.  “Hope yuh make it, all right.”

“Sure, we’ll make it!  May have to shovel some—­”

Again they started, and there were no more stops.  They swung down a straight bit of road where the wind swept bitterly and the hills had drawn back farther into the blur.  They drew near to one that slowly disclosed snow-matted pine trees upon a hillside; skirted this and ploughed along its foot for half a mile or so and then turned out again into a broad, level valley.  Now the mountains were more than ever blurred and indistinct, receding into the distance.

“Do we not go into the mountains?” Mrs. Singleton Corey laid aside her aloofness to ask, when the valley seemed to stretch endlessly before them.

“Sure.  We’ll strike ’em pretty soon now.  Looks a long ways, on account of the storm.  You any relation to the girl that’s lost?”

“I do not know her at all.”  But trouble was slowly thawing the humanity in Mrs. Singleton Corey, and she softened the rebuff a little.  “It must be a terrible thing to be lost in these mountains.”

“Far as I’m concerned,” spoke up Hank from behind them, ’they’re either two of ’em lost, or there ain’t anybody lost.  I’ve got it figured that either she’s at the camp of that feller that’s stayin’ up there somewheres around Taylor Rock, or else the feller’s lost too.  I’ll bet they’re together, wherever they be.”

“What feller’s that, Hank?” the driver twisted his head in his muffled collar.

“Feller that had the lookout on Mount Hough las’ summer.  He’s hidin’ out up there somewheres.  Him an’ the girl used to meet—­I know that fer sure.  Uh course I ain’t sayin’ anything—­but they’s two lost er none, you take it from me.”

The driver grunted and seemed to meditate upon the matter.  “What did that perfessor wade clear down to Marston through the storm for, and report her lost, if she ain’t lost?”

“He come down to see if she’d took the train las’ night.  That’s what he come for.  She’d went off somewheres before noon, and didn’t show up no more.  He didn’t think she was lost, till Morton told him she hadn’t showed up to take no train.  That’s when the perfessor got scared and phoned in.”

The driver grunted again, and called upon his leaders to shake a leg—­they’d have walking enough and plenty when they hit the hill, he said.  Again they neared the valley’s rim, so that pine trees with every branch sagging under its load of snow, fringed the background.  Like a pastel of a storm among hills that she had at home, thought Mrs. Singleton Corey irrelevantly.  But was it Jack whom the man called Hank referred to?  The thought chilled her.

“What’s he hidin’ out for, Hank?  Funny I never heard anything about it.”  The driver spoke after another season of cogitation, and Mrs. Singleton Corey was grateful to him for seeking the information she needed.