nd at the
same time his face was lit up strangely by the weird gleam of a
reflection from the rushing, glassy, peat-stained stream as it glided on
to the mouth of the gully for its leap.

"She canna stay here and see her young maister troon herself," cried
Scoodrach wildly. "She must go town and ket trooned too."

"Coming, Scoody?" cried Kenneth, as he half turned round where he stood
on a little block of stone, against which the water surged.

Scoodrach was in the act of seating himself upon the edge previous to
lowering himself down, and, why he knew not, he hesitated and spoke,
half to Max, half to himself.

"She'll go and trag her pack! she'll go and trag her pack!" Then he
uttered a hoarse cry, for, as they saw Kenneth, framed in as it were by
the narrow rock, gazing back at them, while the swift gleaming water
swept by his legs, they suddenly noted that he started and made a clutch
at an overhanging root which came away in his hands, while the stone
upon which he was standing tottered over and disappeared in the rushing
water.

But Kenneth was active as a monkey; and, failing in his first attempt to
grasp something to support him, he made a second leap and caught at a
hazel bough which grew out horizontally above his head.

This time he was successful, and, as the sturdy bough bent and swayed,
the lad hung right over the rushing water.

"Chump! Swing and chump, Maister Ken!" cried Scoodrach; and then he was
silent, and sat staring wildly, for he realised that he could not help
his young master--that there would not be time.

Kenneth was swinging to and fro, the bough dipping and rising and
dipping, so low that the water almost touched his feet. As he hung he
tried to get a better hold, and made a struggle to go hand over hand to
the place where the bough joined the mossy roots.

But it was all in vain. Before he could get his loosened hand past a
secondary branch, the rotten root broke away from its insecure hold in
the gully wall, and one moment the two spectators saw Kenneth hanging
there, his form shown up by the light behind; the next, they saw branch
and its holder descend quickly into the glassy water, which was
momentarily disturbed by a few leafy twigs standing above its surface,
then a hand appeared, then again with half the arm, making a clutch at
vacancy, and then there was nothing but the water gliding onward to the
opening through which it leaped down into the basin on the top of the
s