adventurous, kept shifting her position, climbing about on the jutting
ledge, until she stood at last on the top of the precipice, which was
some thirty or forty feet high. Against the top leaned a dead balsam,
just as some tempest had cast it, its dead branches bleached and
scraggy. Down this impossible ladder the girl announced her intention
of coming. "No, no," shouted a chorus of voices; "go round; it's unsafe;
the limbs will break; you can't get through them; you'll break your
neck." The girl stood calculating the possibility. The more difficult
the feat seemed, the more she longed to try it.

"For Heaven's sake don't try it, Miss Lamont," cried the artist.

"But I want to. I think I must. You can sketch me in the act. It will be
something new."

And before any one could interpose, the resolute girl caught hold of the
balsam and swung off. A boy or a squirrel would have made nothing of
the feat. But for a young lady in long skirts to make her way down that
balsam, squirming about and through the stubs and dead limbs, testing
each one before she trusted her weight to it, was another affair. It
needed a very cool head and the skill of a gymnast. To transfer her hold
from one limb to another, and work downward, keeping her skirts neatly
gathered about her feet, was an achievement that the spectators could
appreciate; the presence of spectators made it much more difficult. And
the lookers-on were a good deal more excited than the girl. The artist
had his book ready, and when the little figure was half-way down,
clinging in a position at once artistic and painful, he began. "Work
fast," said the girl. "It's hard hanging on." But the pencil wouldn't
work. The artist made a lot of wild marks. He would have given the
world to sketch in that exquisite figure, but every time he cast his eye
upward the peril was so evident that his hand shook. It was no use. The
danger increased as she descended, and with it the excitement of the
spectators. All the young gentlemen declared they would catch her if she
fell, and some of them seemed to hope she might drop into their arms.
Swing off she certainly must when the lowest limb was reached. But that
was ten feet above the ground and the alighting-place was sharp rock and
broken bowlders. The artist kept up a pretense of drawing. He felt every
movement of her supple figure and the strain upon the slender arms, but
this could not be transferred to the book. It was nervous work. The g