and nose, could effectively utter a heroic sentence, nor, with his arm
elevated stiffly over his head, assume a heroic attitude. But, when his
mouth was free again, he said half-sulkily, half-apologetically,--

"I might have known a girl couldn't throw worth a cent."

"Why?" demanded Miss Alice sharply.

"Because--why--because--you see--they haven't got the experience," he
stammered feebly.

"Nonsense! they haven't the CLAVICLE--that's all! It's because I'm a
woman, and smaller in the collar-bone, that I haven't the play of the
fore-arm which you have. See!" She squared her shoulders slightly, and
turned the blaze of her dark eyes full on his. "Experience, indeed! A
girl can learn anything a boy can."

Apprehension took the place of ill-humor in her hearer. He turned his
eyes hastily away, and glanced above him. The elder guide had gone
forward to catch Miss Alice's horse, which, relieved of his rider, was
floundering toward the trail. Mrs. Rightbody was nowhere to be seen. And
these two were still twenty feet below the trail!

There was an awkward pause.

"Shall I put you up the same way?" he queried. Miss Alice looked at
his nose, and hesitated. "Or will you take my hand?" he added in surly
impatience. To his surprise, Miss Alice took his hand, and they began
the ascent together.

But the way was difficult and dangerous. Once or twice her feet slipped
on the smoothly-worn rock beneath; and she confessed to an inward
thankfulness when her uncertain feminine hand-grip was exchanged for his
strong arm around her waist. Not that he was ungentle; but Miss Alice
angrily felt that he had once or twice exercised his superior masculine
functions in a rough way; and yet the next moment she would have
probably rejected the idea that she had even noticed it. There was no
doubt, however, that he WAS a little surly.

A fierce scramble finally brought them back in safety to the trail;
but in the action Miss Alice's shoulder, striking a projecting bowlder,
wrung from her a feminine cry of pain, her first sign of womanly
weakness. The guide stopped instantly.

"I am afraid I hurt you?"

She raised her brown lashes, a trifle moist from suffering, looked in
his eyes, and dropped her own. Why, she could not tell. And yet he had
certainly a kind face, despite its seriousness; and a fine face, albeit
unshorn and weather-beaten. Her own eyes had never been so near to any
man's before, save her lover's; and yet she had never s