truly I am interested in all that
relates to you,--that I regard you with an affection which--

HELP! HELP! HELP!

A cry as of a young person's voice was heard faintly, coming from the
direction of the river. Something in the tone of it struck to his heart,
and he sprang as if he had been stabbed. He flung open his chamber
window and leaped from it to the ground. He ran straight to the bank of
the river by the side of which the village of Alderbank was built, a
little farther down the stream than the house in which he was living.

Everybody that travels in that region knows the beautiful falls which
break the course of the river just above the village; narrow and swift,
and surrounded by rocks of such picturesque forms that they are sought
and admired by tourists. The stream was now swollen, and rushed in a
deep and rapid current over the ledges, through the rocky straits,
plunging at last in tumult and foam, with loud, continuous roar, into the
depths below the cliff from which it tumbled.

A short distance above the fall there projected from the water a rock
which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, hoarded
a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support
a decent vegetable existence. The high waters had nearly submerged it,
but a few slender twigs were seen above their surface.

A skiff was lying close to this rock, between it and the brink of the
fall, which was but a few rods farther down. In the skiff was a youth of
fourteen or fifteen years, holding by the slender twigs, the boat
dragging at them all the time, and threatening to tear them away and go
over the fall. It was not likely that the boy would come to shore alive
if it did. There were stories, it is true, that the Indians used to
shoot the fall in their canoes with safety; but everybody knew that at
least three persons had been lost by going over it since the town was
settled; and more than one dead body had been found floating far down the
river, with bruises and fractured bones, as if it had taken the same
fatal plunge.

There was no time to lose. Clement ran a little way up the river-bank,
flung off his shoes, and sprang from the bank as far as he could leap
into the water. The current swept him toward the fall, but he worked
nearer and nearer the middle of the stream. He was making for the rock,
thinking he could plant his feet upon it and at the worst hold the boat
until he could