nt, from its brazen depths, it
spoke again. The whole mountain seemed to heave. Then something mighty
crashed down. The basin suddenly darkened as though a trap door had
closed, and Tisdale, still shielding his companion, stood looking up,
listening, while the reverberations rang from slope to slope and filled
the vale. Then silence came.

Miss Armitage drew erect, though her hand rested unconsciously on
Tisdale's sleeve. The thing that roofed the basin was black, impenetrably
thick; in it she saw no possible loophole of escape. "This time," she
faltered, "Fate is against you."

Her breast rose and fell in deep, hurried breaths; in the twilight of the
basin her eyes, meeting his, shone like twin stars. Tisdale's blood began
to race; it rose full tide in his veins, "Fate is with me," he answered,
and bent and kissed her mouth.

She shrank back, trembling, against the rocky wall; she glanced about her
with the swift, futile manner of a creature helplessly trapped, then she
pressed her fingers an instant to her eyes and straightened. "You never
will forgive yourself," she said; not in anger, not in judgment, but in a
tone so low, so sad, it seemed to express not only regret but finality.

Tisdale was silent. After a moment he turned to the lower side of the
basin, which afforded better foothold than the wall he had descended, and
began to work up from niche to ledge, grasping a chance bunch of sage, a
stunted bush of chaparral that grew in a cranny, to steady himself. And
the girl stood aloof, watching him. Finally he reached a shelf that
brought him, in touch with the obstruction overhead and stopped to take
out his pocketknife, with which he commenced to create a loophole. Little
twigs rained down; a larger branch fell, letting the daylight through. The
roof was a mesh of pine boughs.

At last he closed his knife and, taking firm hold on a fixed limb, leaned
to reach his other palm down to her. "Come," he said, "set your foot in
that first niche--no, the left one. Now, give me your hand."

She obeyed as she must, and Hollis pushed backward through the aperture he
had made, getting the bough under one armpit. "Now, step to that jagged
little spur; it's solid. The right one, too; there's room." She gained the
upper ledge and waited, hugging the wall pluckily while he worked out on
the rim of the basin and, stretching full length, with the stem of the
tree under his waist, reached his arms down to her. "You will have t