and sought to
hide his momentary weakness, but the hunter had noticed his stumbling
step and gave him a keen, questing glance. Then he too stopped.

"We've climbed enough," he said. "Robert, you've come to the end of
your rope, for the present. It's a wonder your strength didn't give
out long ago, after all you've been through."

"Oh, I can go on! I'm not tired at all!" exclaimed the youth
valiantly.

"The Great Bear tells the truth, Dagaeoga," said the Onondaga, looking
at him with sympathy, "and you cannot hide it from us. We will seek a
covert here."

Robert knew that any further effort to conceal his sudden exhaustion
would be in vain. The collapse was too complete, but he had nothing to
be ashamed of, as he had gone through far more than Willet and Tayoga,
and he had reached the limit of human endurance.

"Well, yes, I am tired," he admitted. "But as we're hanging on the
side of a cliff about fifteen hundred feet above the water I don't see
any nice comfortable inn, with big white beds in it, waiting for us."

"Stay where you are, Dagaeoga," said the Onondaga. "We will not try
the summit to-night, but I may find some sort of an alcove in the
cliff, a few feet of fairly level space, where we can rest."

Robert sank down by the friendly bush, with his back against a great
uplift of stone, while Willet stood on a narrow shelf, supporting
himself against a young evergreen. Tayoga disappeared silently upward.

The painful contraction in the chest of the lad grew easier, and black
specks that had come before his eyes floated away. He returned to
a firm land of reality, but he knew that his strength was not yet
sufficient to permit of their going on. Tayoga came back in about ten
minutes.

"I have found it," he said in his precise school English. "It is not
much, but about three hundred feet from the top of the cliff is a
slight hollow that will give support for our bodies. There we may lie
down and Dagaeoga can sleep his weariness away."

"Camping securely between our enemies above and our enemies below,"
said Robert, his vivid imagination leaping up again. "It appeals to
me to be so near them and yet well hidden, especially as we've left no
trail on this rocky precipice that they can follow."

"It would help me a lot if they were not so close," laughed the
hunter. "I don't need your contrasts, Robert, to make me rest. I'd
like it better if they were a hundred miles away instead of only a
few hundred yards