mi-break in the sheer wall, and halted on
the out-jutting point of the rim where the luckless flock of sheep had
been driven over to destruction. No reference was made to that
ruthless slaughter of innocents. Gowan calmly set about preparing a
camp. The ladies lay down to watch in the shade of a frost-cracked
rock on the verge of the wall.

Already the time had come and gone for the regular signal of the
revolver shot. The watchers began to grow apprehensive. Still their
straining eyes saw no flash in the depths. A half hour passed. Their
apprehension deepened to dread. An hour--they were white with terror.

Suddenly a tiny red spot appeared--not a flash that came and went like
lightning, but a flame that remained and grew larger.

"A fire!" cried Isobel. "They have halted and built a fire."

Genevieve brought the flag and thrust it out over the edge. The inner
end of the pole she wedged in a crevice of the split rock.

"They have stopped to rest," she said. "It may be that Lafayette is
worn out. But soon I trust they will be coming up."

She looked through her glasses. The fire was burning its brightest.
She discerned the prostrate figure beside the ledge. She watched it
fixedly. Soon another figure appeared in the circle of firelight. It
bent over the first, doing something with pieces of stick.

"Look," whispered Genevieve, handing the glasses to her companion,
"Tom is hurt. Lafayette is binding his leg. It is broken or badly
strained.--Oh! will your father never come?"

"Tom hurt? It can't be--no, no!" protested Isobel. But she too looked
and saw. After a time she added breathlessly: "It can't be so bad!
Lafe is helping him to rise.... They are starting this way--to the
foot of the wall! They will be climbing up!"

"But if his leg is injured!" differed Genevieve.

Again they waited. Presently the fire scattered, and a streak of flame
traveled across the canyon to a point beneath them. Soon the red spot
of a new fire glowed in the shadows so directly under them that a
pebble dropped from their fingers must have grazed down the precipices
and fallen into the flames.

After several minutes of alternate peering through the glasses,
Genevieve handed them back to Isobel for the third time, and rose to
go to her baby.

"It is Tom alone," she said, divining the truth. "Lafayette has helped
him to the best place they could find, and now he is coming up to us
for help."

When she had fed the baby and soothed h