is last hour was come.

M'Dermot and I stood aghast and helpless, gazing with open mouths and
strained eyeballs at our unhappy friend. What could we do? Were we to
dare the leap, which one far more active and vigorous than ourselves had
unsuccessfully attempted? It would have been courting destruction,
without a chance of saving Ashley. But Dora put us to shame. One scream,
and only one, she uttered, and then, gathering up her habit, she sprang
unaided from her mule. Her cheek was pale as the whitest marble, but her
presence of mind was unimpaired, and she seemed to gain courage and
decision in the moment of peril.

"Your cravats, your handkerchiefs!" cried she, unfastening, as she
spoke, her long cashmere scarf. Mechanically M'Dermot and myself obeyed.
With the speed of light and a woman's dexterity, she knotted together
her scarf, a long silk cravat which I gave her, M'Dermot's handkerchief
and mine, and securing--how, I know not--a stone at either extremity of
the rope thus formed, she threw one end of it, with sure aim and steady
hand, across the ravine and round the sapling already referred to. Then
leaning forward till I feared she would fall into the chasm, and sprang
forward to hold her back, she let go of the other end. Ashley's hold was
already growing feeble, his fingers were torn by the rock, the blood
started from under his nails, and he turned his face towards us with a
mute prayer for succour. At that moment the two ends of the shawl fell
against him, and he instinctively grasped them. It was a moment of
fearful suspense. Would the knots so hastily made resist the tension of
his weight? They did so; he raised himself by strength of wrist. The
sapling bent and bowed, but his hand was now close to it. He grasped it;
another powerful effort, the last effort of despair, and he lay
exhausted and almost senseless upon the rocky brink. At the same moment,
with a cry of joy, Dora fell fainting into her brother's arms.

Of that day's adventures little remains to tell. A walk of a mile
brought Ashley to a place where a bridge, thrown over the ravine,
enabled him to cross it. I omit his thanks to Dora, his apologies for
the alarm he had caused her, and his admiring eulogy of her presence of
mind. Her manner of receiving them, and the look she gave him when, on
rejoining us, he took her hand, and with a natural and grateful courtesy
that prevented the action from appearing theatrical or unusual, pressed
it to his l