It was still early in the day when Philip fell over the boulder face of the mountain; and when the chopping which he had heard through the fog ceased at the house, Bromley had indeed gone in, but not for shelter from the rain. He had gone to warn Lieutenant Coleman of the absence of their half-demented comrade and of the peril he ran in wandering about on the mountain in the fog. They felt so sure of finding him near the point of rocks that they went together in that direction; but before they started Philip had wandered from the path, and by the time they reached the rocks he had put the house behind him and was walking in the direction of the Cove. Finding no trace of him there, and seeing the dense mist which covered the valley and made observation impossible, they separated and went off in opposite ways, calling him by name, "Philip! Philip!" and as they got farther and farther from each other, "Philip! Philip!" came back to each faintly through the fog and the rain. They made their way to such points as he might have found shelter under, but their calls brought no response. They knew that in his peculiar state of mind he might hear their voices and make no reply, and in this was at last their only hope of his safety as they continued their search.

At twelve o\'clock a wind set in from the east, redoubling the rain, but rapidly dispelling the fog. In an hour every place where he could possibly have concealed himself had been searched, and with one mind they came back to the point of rocks. They lay out on the wet ledge and looked over with fear and trembling, half expecting to see his mangled body below. They could see clearly to the foot of the precipice, and there was nothing there but the smooth, trackless snow; and then when they drew back they looked in each other\'s faces and knew for the first time how much they loved Philip and how much each was to the other.

They were almost certain now that he had fallen over one face of the mountain or the other. Yesterday they could have followed his track in the thin snow, but now the rain, which was still falling heavily, had obliterated one after melting what remained of the other. They went together down the ladders, and for its whole length along the base of that ledge. When they returned to the plateau, Lieutenant Coleman and Bromley were tired, and soaked with the rain, and crushed with the awful certainty that Philip had fallen over the great rock face into the Cove. They could neither eat nor sleep as long as there was a possibility of discovering any clue to his fate; and so in time they came to the slippery rock in front of the station, where the heel of his boot or the sharp edge of the telescope had made a scratch on the stone that the rain was powerless to wash out.

It was no use to call his name after that dreadful plunge, the very thought of which tied their tongues to that extent that the two men stood in silence over their discovery; and when they could learn no more they came away hand in hand, without uttering a word.

This was indeed the point where Philip had gone over the great rock; but by a strange good fortune his body had plunged into a mass of rotten snow fifty feet from the brink of the precipice. It was the snow of the avalanche making ready to fall; and through this first bank his body broke its way, falling from point to point for another fifty feet, until he lay unconscious over the roots of the great icicles which hung free from the rounded ledge below him, dripping their substance nine hundred feet into the Cove.

When he came to himself, chilled and sore after his great fall, the moon was shining softly on the snow about him and sparkling on the ice below. He had no recollection of his fall, and but the vaguest remembrance of what had gone before. It was rather as if he had dreamed that he had fallen upon the avalanche, and when he had first opened his eyes upon the snow about him and above him, he tried to reason with himself that no dream could be so real. He remembered vaguely the autumn days by the golden mill, and he knew that it was not winter at all; and yet this was real snow in which he lay bruised and helpless. He realized that he was almost frozen, and his clothing, that had been wet, was now stiffening on his limbs. The great shock had restored his shattered mind, leaving a wide blank, it is true, to be filled in for the best part of the year that was past. He was himself, again now, but where it was not at first so clear. There was nothing to be seen above beyond the snow which hung over him; but when he turned his sore body so as to look away from the mountain-side, his eyes rested on the long white roof of the Cove post-office, as he had seen it often before from the top of the plateau. Philip knew now that he was in the very heart of the avalanche. He lay on the very brink of the ice which might fall with the heat of another day\'s sun. At first he began to cry out for help; but his voice was such a small thing in the mass of snow against the great rock. And then he thought of the people from the hills who would come at noon of the next day to watch by the post-office to see him fall—him, Philip Welton! And then he thought of Coleman and Bromley, who must have given him up for dead; and even of his uncle at the old mill, with more of desire than he had ever felt for him before. He tried to drag himself a little from the icy brink; but his legs and arms were numb and stiffened with the cold. He began to clap his nerveless hands and stimulate the circulation of his blood by such movements as he could make. He had an instinctive feeling that the avalanche had been trembling yesterday where it clung to the great, black, vertical stain on the face of the boulder just below the trees that looked like berry-bushes from the road in the Cove. He knew that it would not fall during the night. He had no recollection of the rain. He knew that more heat of the sun was yet required to loosen it for the great plunge. It was freezing now, and every hour added solidity to the surface of the snow; and yet as he gained the power he feared to move, as the workman distrusts the strong scaffold about the tall steeple because of its great height from the ground.

Above him, ten feet away, he could see the hole in the snow through which he knew he must have fallen; and as he thought of the fearful shoot his body would have made, clearing even the great ledge of icicles, if the surface of that bank had not been rotted by some cause, his limbs were almost paralyzed with terror. The thought helped to stir the sluggish blood in his veins, and he shrank, rather than moved, a little from the awful brink where he lay. Gradually he rose to his feet and looked about him. The Cove post-office, showing its white roof through the naked trees that looked like berry-bushes in their turn, far, far below him, fascinated him until he felt a mad impulse to leap over the icicles to oblivion. Instead of yielding to this impulse, however, he covered his eyes with his hands until he found strength to turn his back on the tiny object that terrified him. If he cried out, his voice, against the rock for a sounding-board, might awaken the sleeping postmaster before his comrades on the plateau. Even in that case no help could reach him from below across the bridgeless gorge; and even if his comrades were above him on the rocks, they could do nothing for him.

"PHILIP COULD SEE THE HOLE IN THE SNOW THROUGH WHICH HE KNEW HE MUST HAVE FALLEN."
"PHILIP COULD SEE THE HOLE IN THE SNOW
THROUGH WHICH HE KNEW HE MUST HAVE FALLEN."

Should he wait there to meet certain death in the avalanche to-morrow or the nest day? He thought of the cool courage of Bromley, and wondered what he would do if he were the............