ing 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.

The shock of dropping fifty feet through the air, and landing without
experiencing anything more dangerous than a greatly accelerated
heart-action was enough, of itself, to