sturdy old trunk ten feet above the water. For a moment King
disappeared under an out-thrust ledge; then she saw him again, the pack
on his shoulders. He had climbed up to the top of the log; he was
crossing. Where he went now she must follow!

Fascinated, she watched him. Once she thought he was going to fall. But
unerringly he trod the rude bridge underfoot, gained the other side
without mishap, tossed down his bundle, and lowered himself from the log
after it. Gloria marvelled at him; she could see his face and it was
impassive. Could he not hear the hostile voices of the raging waters?
Could he not feel the ominous threat of the bleak day and the monster
cliffs? Was he a man without imagination as he seemed to be without
fear?

On he went, down-stream again, clinging to the steep pitch of the gorge,
until he was almost under the mouth of the cavern. He put back his head
and looked up; it was a hundred feet above him and the cliffs, from
where Gloria sat numb with cold and dread, looked unsurmountable. Yet he
was going up them!

"And where he goes you will follow." It was as though the wild waters
below were chanting it into her ears and thereafter filling the gorge
with the mockery of derisive laughter.

Slowly, tediously, but with never a sign of hesitation, King made his
way up the cliff. He had been here before; he knew and remembered every
foothold and handhold. Nor was the task the impossible one it looked
from a distance. There were cracks and crevices; there were seams of a
harder material which, better withstanding the attacks of time, were
thrust out beyond the general level; on them a man might stand. There
were spots of softer material, scooped out into pockets by wind and
water; there were flinty splinters; there were places where the wall,
looking from across the canon to be sheer and perpendicular, sloped more
gently, and a man might crawl up them.

King had drawn up after him, stage after stage, the roll of bedding,
using Blackie's tie-rope to haul it up and to moor it briefly. Gloria
saw it swing at times like a huge, misshapen pendulum; watched it crawl
up after him. She saw the wind snatch at it and set it scraping back and
forth when he let it dangle at rope's end; she saw King's coat flap in
the wind. Once she cried out aloud, thinking a second time that King was
falling. If he fell from that height--if he were killed--what then would
be the fate of Gloria Gaynor!

But at length he came sa