her brink of the chasm.

When she again looked down at Ashton he was descending a crevice with
a rapidity that brought her heart into her mouth. Yet there was no
hurry in his quick movements, and every little while he paused on a
shelf to peer at the steep slope immediately below him. Soon the
circle of lantern light became smaller and dimmer to the anxious
watcher above. Steadily it waned until all she could see was a little
point of light far down in the darkness--and always it grew smaller
and fainter.

Lying there with her bosom pressed against the hard stone, her
straining eyes fixed on that lessening point of light, she had lost
all count of time. Her whole soul was in her eyes, watching, watching,
watching lest that tiny light should suddenly shoot down like a meteor
and vanish in the darkness. Many times it disappeared, but never in
swift downward flight, and always it reappeared.

Not until the moon came gliding up above the lofty white crests of the
snowy range did she think of aught else than that speck of light and
of him who was bearing it down into the black depths. But the glint of
moonlight on a crystalline stone broke her steadfast gaze. Before she
could again fix it on the faint point of lantern light a sound that
had been knocking at the threshold of her consciousness at last made
itself heard. It was an intermittent clinking as of steel on stone.

She looked around, thinking that one of the horses was walking along
the ridge slope with a loose shoe. But all were standing motionless in
the moonlight, dozing. Again she heard the click, and this time she
located the direction from which it came. She looked at the split rock
on the edge of the sheer drop. From beside it she had peered down
through the field glasses at the outstretched form of her brother, far
beneath in the canyon bottom.

The sound came from that rock. She stared at the side of the
frost-split fragment with dilated eyes. The crack between the loose
outer bowlder and the main mass showed very black and wide in the
moonlight. Could it be possible that it had widened--that it was
slipping over? And her brother down there beneath it!...

* * * * *

By setting wedge-shaped stones in the top of the cleft rock and prying
with the crowbar, Gowan had gradually canted the top of the loose
outer bowlder towards the edge of the precipice. It had only to topple
forward in order to plunge down the can