rock grew more pronounced. At each step, he made sure
that his feet still clung. Then, when still two yards from the edge,
he found the footing too precarious for further walking, even with the
rope. A glance over his shoulder showed that Uncle Dick had halted a
rod above. He looked closely and saw that the brim of the cliff was
smooth a little to the right. To save the rope as much as possible, he
moved in this direction, Uncle Dick above making the like change.
Then, he seated himself on the rock and, while the men above paid out
the vine, he went gently sliding downward toward the abyss.

Presently, his feet reached the brow of the cliff, passed beyond it,
hung in space. The men watching from above, let the rope slide still
more slowly. Now his middle was at the brink. He held to the rope with
his right hand. With his left he fended himself from the cliff. He
looked down. For an instant, accustomed though he was to the high
places among the mountain crags, his senses reeled before the
impression of unsubstantial vastness. Out beyond him was nothingness
for what seemed endless distance. Straight below was the sheer wall of
the precipice, with hardly a rift for five hundred feet. There a ledge
showed dimly. Then, again, a half-thousand feet of vertical rocks to
the valley.

But the vertigo passed in that single instant. His vision cleared. And
he saw her. He heard her, too, in the same moment. Here, the cliff was
not quite perpendicular. She had slid, rather than fallen, to a
resting place. She was not seriously injured. It was hardly a score of
feet from the top of the cliff to the tiny shelf of rock on which she
lay. This was less than a yard in width. A bit of pine shrub jutted
from it courageously, held by its roots burrowing in secret fissures
of the rock. A log, rolled down by some amusement-seeker on the crest,
had lodged on the outer edge of the shelf. The miniature pine held
one end of it; the other was wedged in a crack of the precipice. The
log lay like a paling to the narrow shelf. Within that meager shelter,
Plutina crouched. Beyond her the ledge narrowed, and ascended to where
the cliff was broken. Thus the dog had mounted.

The girl's face was uplifted, pallid, with burning eyes fast on the
lover who descended to her. Her expression showed rapture, but no
surprise that this rescuer should be her beloved. The fairy crystal
was competent to work any wonder. Zeke, spinning slowly with the
twisting vine,