ogress up the perpendicular wall over the canon. Those around
groaned as they watched, expecting each moment to see the man's body
fall backwards sickeningly into space.

But he stuck to the wall as if part of it, his arms widespread, his
fingers feeling every inch for hold, and now he was mounting faster as
if sure of himself, confident that he could cling. If he could keep hold
until his hand touched the first row of window-sills, he had a chance. A
long red arm reached up; groped painfully; the finger-tips touched the
end of a blind. There was dead silence except for the roar of the
wind-driven fire while the mason pawed along the window-sill for safe
lodgment; then--"He's caught it!"

A shout went up, and while her breath seemed to choke her, Adelle saw
the man in the glare of the flame pull himself up, inch by inch, until
his head was level with the glass, butt his head against the heavy pane,
and with a final heave disappear within while a black smudge of smoke
poured from the vent he had made.

A long, silent, agonizing emptiness while he was gone, and he was back
at the window, standing large and bloody in the light, his arms about
the figure of the nurse, who had evidently fainted. Adelle felt one
sharp pang of agony;--"Why had he taken her, not the child?" But her
soul rejected this selfish thought;--"He knows," she said, "he knows--he
must save her first!"

Clark had tied the sheets under the woman's shoulders, and holding the
weight of the body with one hand, he crept lightly from one window ledge
to the next until he came within reach of the terrace, then swung the
woman and cast her loose. She fell in a heap beside Adelle. They said
she was living.

Already the mason had groped his way back along the sills to the open
window and disappeared. When he reappeared he had the small boy in his
arms, evidently asleep or unconscious, for he lay a crumpled little
bundle against the mason's breast. This time Clark continued his course
along the sills until he reached a gutter, clinging with one hand,
holding his burden tight with the other. It was a feat almost harder
than the skinning of the naked wall. When he dropped the last ten feet
to the ground cries rose from the little group below. It was the
unconscious recognition of an achievement that not one man in ten
thousand was capable of, a combination of courage, skill, and perfect
nerve which let him walk safely above the abyss across the perpendicular
wal