im to sleep, she laid out
bandages and salve, set a full coffeepot on the fire started by Gowan,
and examined the cream and eggs brought back by the puncher on his
second night trip to the ranch.

Nearly an hour had passed when Isobel called in joyous excitement: "I
see him! I see him! Down there where the sunlight slants on the rocks.
Oh! how bravely! how swiftly he climbs!"

Genevieve went to take the glasses and look. Several moments were lost
before she could locate the tiny figure creeping up that stairway of
the giants. But, once she had fixed the glasses upon him, she could
see him clearly. Isobel had well expressed it when she said that he
was climbing swiftly and bravely. Running along shelves, clambering
ledges, following up the crevices that offered the best foothold, the
tattered climber fought his dizzy way upwards, upwards, ever upwards!

Rarely, after some particularly hard scramble, he flung himself down
on a shelf or on one of the steps of the Titanic ladder, to rest and
summon energy for another upward rush. His good fortune seemed as
marvelous as his endurance and daring. He never once slipped and never
once had to turn back from an ascent. As if guided by instinct or
divine intuition, he chose always the safest, the least difficult, the
most continuously scalable way on all that perilous pitch.

So swift an ascent was beyond the ordinary powers of man. It could
have been made only by a maniac or by one to whom great passion had
given command of those latent forces of the body that enable the
maniac to fling strong men about like children. Long before the
climber reached the top of that terrible ladder, his hands were torn
and bleeding, the tattered garments were half rent from his limbs and
body, his eyes were sunk deep in their sockets.

Yet ever he climbed, ledge above ledge, crevice after crevice, until
at last only one steep pitch rose above him. A rope came sliding down
the rock. A voice--the sweetest voice in all the wide world of
sunshine and life--called to him. It sounded very far away, farther
than the bounds of reality, yet he heard and obeyed. He slipped the
loop of the rope down over his shoulders and about his heaving
forebody. Then suddenly his labor was lightened. His leaden body
became winged. It floated upwards.

When he came to himself, a bitter refreshing wetness was soothing his
parched mouth and black swollen tongue; gentle fingers were spreading
balm on his torn hands; t