ink you will reach the top.'

With trembling limbs she did exactly as he told her. The preternatural
quiet and solemnity of his manner overspread upon herself, and gave her
a courage not her own. She made a spring from the top of his shoulder,
and was up.

Then she turned to look at him.

By an ill fate, the force downwards of her bound, added to his own
weight, had been too much for the block of quartz upon which his feet
depended. It was, indeed, originally an igneous protrusion into the
enormous masses of black strata, which had since been worn away from the
sides of the alien fragment by centuries of frost and rain, and now left
it without much support.

It moved. Knight seized a tuft of sea-pink with each hand.

The quartz rock which had been his salvation was worse than useless now.
It rolled over, out of sight, and away into the same nether sky that had
engulfed the telescope.

One of the tufts by which he held came out at the root, and Knight began
to follow the quartz. It was a terrible moment. Elfride uttered a low
wild wail of agony, bowed her head, and covered her face with her hands.

Between the turf-covered slope and the gigantic perpendicular rock
intervened a weather-worn series of jagged edges, forming a face yet
steeper than the former slope. As he slowly slid inch by inch upon
these, Knight made a last desperate dash at the lowest tuft of
vegetation--the last outlying knot of starved herbage ere the rock
appeared in all its bareness. It arrested his further descent. Knight
was now literally suspended by his arms; but the incline of the
brow being what engineers would call about a quarter in one, it was
sufficient to relieve his arms of a portion of his weight, but was very
far from offering an adequately flat face to support him.

In spite of this dreadful tension of body and mind, Knight found time
for a moment of thankfulness. Elfride was safe.

She lay on her side above him--her fingers clasped. Seeing him again
steady, she jumped upon her feet.

'Now, if I can only save you by running for help!' she cried. 'Oh, I
would have died instead! Why did you try so hard to deliver me?' And she
turned away wildly to run for assistance.

'Elfride, how long will it take you to run to Endelstow and back?'

'Three-quarters of an hour.'

'That won't do; my hands will not hold out ten minutes. And is there
nobody nearer?'

'No; unless a chance passer may happen to be.'

'He would have nothing