“For God’s sake, let us go on!” he said; “if we once get benumbed, we are lost.  We must keep moving, till help comes to us.”

Then they staggered, and stumbled on again, till they both sank into a deep snow-drift.

They extricated themselves, but, oh, when they felt that deep cold snow all round them, it was a foretaste of the grave.

The sun had set, it was bitterly cold, and still the enormous flakes fell, and doubled the darkness of the night.

They staggered and stumbled on, not now with any hope of extricating themselves from the fatal mountain, but merely to keep the blood alive in their veins.  And, when they were exhausted, they sat down, and soon were heaps of snow.

While they sat thus, side by side, thinking no more of love, or any other thing but this:  should they ever see the sun rise, or sit by a fireside again? suddenly they heard a sound in the air behind them, and, in a moment, what seemed a pack of hounds in full cry passed close over their heads.

They uttered a loud cry.

“We are saved!” cried Grace.  “Mr. Raby is hunting us with his dogs.  That was the echo.”

Coventry groaned.  “What scent would lie?” said he.  “Those hounds were in the air; a hundred strong.”

Neither spoke for a moment, and then it was Grace who broke the terrible silence.

“The Gabriel hounds!”

“The Gabriel hounds; that run before calamity!  Mr. Coventry, there’s nothing to be done now, but to make our peace with God.  For you are a dead man, and I’m a dead woman.  My poor papa! poor Mr. Little!”

She kneeled down on the snow, and prayed patiently, and prepared to deliver up her innocent soul to Him who gave it.

Not so her companion.  He writhed away from death.  He groaned, he sighed, he cursed, he complained.  What was Raby thinking of, to let them perish?

Presently he shouted out—­“I’ll not die this dog’s death, I will not.  I’ll save myself, and come back for you.”

The girl prayed on, and never heeded him.

But he was already on his feet, and set off to run:  and he actually did go blundering on for a furlong and more, and fell into a mountain-stream, swollen by floods, which whirled him along with it like a feather, it was not deep enough to drown him by submersion, but it rolled him over and over again, and knocked him against rocks and stones, and would infallibly have destroyed him, but that a sudden sharp turn in the current drove him, at last, against a projecting tree, which he clutched, and drew himself out with infinite difficulty.  But when he tried to walk, his limbs gave way; and he sank fainting on the ground, and the remorseless snow soon covered his prostrate body.

All this time, Grace Carden was kneeling on the snow, and was, literally a heap of snow.  She was patient and composed now, and felt a gentle sleep stealing over.