her upon the trail. "You see that thorn-bush where the rock has fallen
away. It was just there. It is not safe to go farther. No, really! Miss
Euphemia! Please don't! It's almost certain death!"

But the giddy girl had darted past him, and, face to the wall of
the cliff, was creeping along the dangerous path. Rand followed
mechanically. Once or twice the trail crumbled beneath her feet; but
she clung to a projecting root of chaparral, and laughed. She had almost
reached her elected goal, when, slipping, the treacherous chaparral she
clung to yielded in her grasp, and Rand, with a cry, sprung forward.

But the next instant she quickly transferred her hold to a cleft in
the cliff, and was safe. Not so her companion. The soil beneath him,
loosened by the impulse of his spring, slipped away: he was falling with
it, when she caught him sharply with her disengaged hand, and together
they scrambled to a more secure footing.

"I could have reached it alone," said the "Pet," "if you'd left me
alone."

"Thank Heaven, we're saved!" said Rand gravely.

"AND WITHOUT A ROPE," said Miss Euphemia significantly.

Rand did not understand her. But, as they slowly returned to the summit,
he stammered out the always difficult thanks of a man who has been
physically helped by one of the weaker sex. Miss Euphemia was quick to
see her error.

"I might have made you lose your footing by catching at you," she said
meekly. "But I was so frightened for you, and could not help it."

The superior animal, thoroughly bamboozled, thereupon complimented her
on her dexterity.

"Oh, that's nothing!" she said, with a sigh. "I used to do the
flying-trapeze business with papa when I was a child, and I've not
forgotten it." With this and other confidences of her early life, in
which Rand betrayed considerable interest, they beguiled the tedious
ascent. "I ought to have made you carry me up," said the lady, with a
little laugh, when they reached the summit; "but you haven't known me as
long as you have Mornie, have you?" With this mysterious speech she bade
Rand "good-night," and hurried off to the cabin.

And so a week passed by,--the week so dreaded by Rand, yet passed so
pleasantly, that at times it seemed as if that dread were only a trick
of his fancy, or as if the circumstances that surrounded him were
different from what he believed them to be. On the seventh day the
doctor had staid longer than usual; and Rand, who had been sitting with
Eu