"Ruth, Ruth! for God's sake come and help me!"

The blood flew back hotly to Rand's cheek. It was Mornie's voice. By
leaning over the ledge, he could distinguish something moving along the
almost precipitous face of the cliff, where an abandoned trail, long
since broken off and disrupted by the fall of a portion of the ledge,
stopped abruptly a hundred feet below him. Rand knew the trail, a
dangerous one always: in its present condition a single mis-step
would be fatal. Would she make that mis-step? He shook off a horrible
temptation that seemed to be sealing his lips, and paralyzing his
limbs, and almost screamed to her, "Drop on your face, hang on to the
chaparral, and don't move!"

In another instant, with a coil of rope around his arm, he was dashing
down the almost perpendicular "slide." When he had nearly reached the
level of the abandoned trail, he fastened one end of the rope to a
jutting splinter of granite, and began to "lay out," and work his
way laterally along the face of the mountain. Presently he struck the
regular trail at the point from which the woman must have diverged.

"It is Rand," she said, without lifting her head.

"It is," replied Rand coldly. "Pass the rope under your arms, and I'll
get you back to the trail."

"Where is Ruth?" she demanded again, without moving. She was trembling,
but with excitement rather than fear.

"I don't know," returned Rand impatiently. "Come! the ledge is already