stopped, barked again, and returned, repeating the
manoeuvre. It was plain that he wanted Alan to follow him, and it
occurred to the young minister that the dog's mistress must be in
danger of some kind. Instantly he set off after him; and the dog, with
a final sharp bark of satisfaction, sprang up the low bank into the
spruces.

Alan followed him across the peninsula and then along the further
shore, which rapidly grew steep and high. Half a mile down the cliffs
were rocky and precipitous, while the beach beneath them was heaped
with huge boulders. Alan followed the dog along one of the narrow
paths with which the barrens abounded until nearly a mile from Four
Winds. Then the animal halted, ran to the edge of the cliff and
barked.

It was an ugly-looking place where a portion of the soil had evidently
broken away recently, and Alan stepped cautiously out to the brink and
looked down. He could not repress an exclamation of dismay and alarm.

A few feet below him Lynde Oliver was lying on a mass of mossy soil
which was apparently on the verge of slipping over a sloping shelf of
rock, below which was a sheer drop of thirty feet to the cruel
boulders below. The extreme danger of her position was manifest at a
glance; the soil on which she lay was stationary, yet it seemed as if
the slightest motion on her part would send it over the brink.

Lynde lay movelessly; her face was white, and both fear and appeal
were visible in her large dilated eyes. Yet she was quite calm and a
faint smile crossed her pale lips as she saw the man and the dog.

"Good faithful Pat, so you did bring help," she said.

"But how can I help you, Miss Oliver?" said Alan hoarsely. "I cannot
reach you--and it looks as if the slightest touch or jar would send
that broken earth over the brink."

"I fear it would. You must go back to Four Winds and get a rope."

"And leave you here alone--in such danger?"

"Pat will stay with me. Besides, there is nothing else to do. You will
find a rope in that little house where you put the water for Emily.
Father and Emily are away. I think I am quite safe here if I don't
move at all."

Alan's own common sense told him that, as she said, there was nothing
else to do and, much as he hated to leave her alone thus, he realized
that he must lose no time in doing it.

"I'll be back as quickly as possible," he said hurriedly.

Alan had been a noted runner at college and his muscles had not
forgotten their old