and again the long line of buckets sway gently as the
cable grew taut and the buckets again slid up and down. Her heart was
beating wildly as she lifted her eyes to the dizzy height. She knew well
what the stopping and the starting meant. Sharp drawn against the lofty
sky, the great cable seemed a slender thread to hold a human life in
trust. What if the clutch should slip that held the bucket in place?
What if other clutches should slip and let the heavy masses of steel
slide down the cable to dash into the one that held the girl who had
grown so dear to her? In vain she pushed these possibilities aside. They
returned with increased momentum and hurled themselves into her
shrinking soul. There were these dangers. "All employees of the Rainbow
Company are forbidden to ride on the tram. ANY EMPLOYEE VIOLATING THIS
RULE WILL BE INSTANTLY DISCHARGED." These words burned themselves on her
vision in characters of fire. Elise had explained all of these things to
her, and now! She buried her face in her trembling hands. Not for long.
Again her face, pale and drawn, was turned upward. She moaned aloud. A
black mass clinging to the cable was rising and sinking, swaying from
side to side, a slender figure poised in the swinging bucket, steadied
by a white hand that grasped the rim of steel. She turned from the
window resolved to see no more. Her resolution fled. She was again at
the window with upturned face and straining eyes, white lips whispering
prayers that God might be good to the girl who was risking her life for
another. The slender threads even then had vanished. There was only a
fleck of black floating high above the rambling town, above the rocks
mercilessly waiting below. She did not see all. At the mine two stealthy
men were even then stuffing masses of powder under the foundations that
held the cables to their work. Even as she looked and prayed a
flickering candle flame licked into fiery life a hissing, spitting fuse
and two men scrambled and clambered to safety from the awful wreck that
was to come. A smoking fuse eating its way to death and "320" not yet in
the mill! She saw another sight.

From out the shadow of the eastern mountain, a band of uncouth men
emerged, swung into line and bunched on the level terrace beyond the
boarding-house. Simultaneously every neighbouring boulder blossomed
forth in tufts of creamy white that writhed and widened till they melted
in thin air like noisome, dark-grown fungi that wilt