For a moment or two each
in turn, supported by one foot with body braced against the rock,
grasped the knob and vanished round the corner. It was plain one must
get a firm hold, but Lister thought this was all. He was used to the
tall skeleton trestles that carried the rails across Canadian ravines.

After the others disappeared Lister seized the knob. He thought the
stone he stood on moved and he cautiously took a heavier strain on his
arm. He could get across, but he obeyed an impulse and gave the stone a
push. It rolled out and, when he swung himself back to the ledge,
plunged down and smashed upon the rocks below. For a few moments the
echoes rolled about the crags, and then Hyslop shouted: "Are you all
right? Can you get round?"

Lister said he thought not, and Hyslop replied that it did not matter.
Barbara would take him up a grassy ridge and the others would meet them
at the top. A rattle of nailed boots indicated that he was going off and
Lister turned and glanced at Barbara. She had sat down on an inclined
slab and her figure and face, in profile, cut against the sky. A yard or
two beneath her, the sloping rock vanished at the top of a steep pitch
and one saw nothing but the crags across the narrow dale. Yet Lister
thought the girl was not disturbed.

"I expect I was clumsy,'' he apologized.

"Well," she said, "it looks like that!"

He gave her a quick glance and pondered. Although he had gone to Carrock
since she came home, she had been strangely cold and, so to speak,
aloof. He had imagined their meeting might embarrass her, but she was
not embarrassed. In fact, she had met him as if he were a friend, but he
had not seen her afterwards unless somebody was about. Now he meant to
force her to be frank.

"I was clumsy," he resumed. "All the same, when I felt the stone begin
to move I might have pulled myself across by my hands. I expect the
block would have been firm enough to carry you."

"Yes, I know," said Barbara. "You didn't want me to get across!"

Lister studied her. He doubted if it was altogether exertion that had
brought the blood to her skin and given her eyes the keen sparkle.
Clinging to the rock, with the shadowy gulf below, she looked strangely
alert and virile. Her figure cut against the sky; he noted its
slenderness and finely-drawn lines. She was not angry, although he had
admitted he pushed down the stone, but he felt as if something divided
them and doubted if he could remove the obs