Even the wind was dying down, and the rain fell with a deadened sob at his feet.
Three o'clock! Wisdom had told him, the day they had been up there, that the top was only three-quarters of an hour beyond where he stood.
Something still cried "Excelsior" within him, and without halting longer than to satisfy himself by another shout, he started on.
How he achieved that tremendous climb he could never say.

The clouds had rolled off, and the moonlight lit up the rocks almost like day.
Never once did he pull up or flag in his ascent.

He even ceased to shout.
Presently there loomed before him, gleaming in the moonlight, the cairn.
For the first time in its annals, a Fellsgarth boy had got to the top of Hawk's Pike.
But, so far from elation at the glory of the achievement, Rollitt uttered a groan of dismay when he looked round and found no one there after all.

That he would find Fisher minor there he had never doubted; and now--all this had been time lost.
Without waiting to heed the glorious moonlight prospect over lake and hill, he turned almost savagely, and scrambled down the crags.

It was perilous work--more perilous than the scramble up.