Temptation tugged harder. You couldn't carry on an argument with one tan
shoe and stocking and a flutter of blue frock, and he wanted badly to
tell about the Golden Tusks. Should he go on alone, or should he climb
up and fetch her----?

The answer to that came from the top of the tree. A crack, a rustle and
a shriek from Tara, who seemed to be coming down faster than she cared
about.

Another shriek. "Oh, Roy! I'm stuck! Do come!"

Stuck! She was dangling from the end of a jagged bough that had caught
in her skirt as she fell. There she hung ignominiously--his High Tower
Princess--her hair floating like seaweed, her hands clutching at the
nearest branches that were too pliable for support. If her skirt should
tear, or the bough should break----

"_Keep_ stuck!" he commanded superfluously; and like a squirrel he sped
up the great beech, its every foothold as familiar to him as the ground
he walked on.

But to release her skirt and give her a hand he must trust himself on
the jagged bough, hoping it would bear the double weight. It looked
rather a dead one, and its sharp end was sticking through a hole in
Tara's frock. He set foot on it cautiously and proffered a hand.

"Now--catch hold!" he said.

Agile as he, she swung herself up somehow and clutched at him with both
hands. The half-dead bough, resenting these gymnastics, cracked