remaining ten feet to where he
could stand upon a branch and attach the rope to the stump, pass the end
over a higher bough and lower it down to the others. Then rolling his
sleeves right up to the shoulder, he began to cut, the keen teeth of the
saw biting into the soft, mahogany-like wood, and sending down the dust
like sleet.

It was a good half-hour's task to cut it through, but the sturdy young
fellow worked away till only a cut or two more was necessary, and then
he stopped.

"Ready below?" he said, glancing down.

"All right!" cried Ellis. "Cut clean through, so that it does not
splinter."

"Yes, sir," shouted Grange; and he was giving the final cuts, when for
some reason, possibly to get the rope a little farther along, Barnett
gave it a sharp jerk, with the effect that the nearly free piece of
timber gave way with a sharp crash, just as John Grange was reaching out
to give the last cut.

Cedar snaps like glass. Down went the block with a crash to the extent
the rope would allow, and there swung like a pendulum.

Down, too, went Grange, overbalanced.

He dropped the saw, and made a desperate snatch at a bough in front, and
he caught it, and hung in a most precarious way for a few moments.

"Quick!" he shouted to Barnett; "the ladder!"

Ellis and old Tummus held the rope, not daring to let go and bring the
piece of timber crashing down. Barnett alone was at liberty to move the
ladder; and he stood staring up, as if paralysed by the danger and by
the thought that the man above him was his rival, for whose sake he had
been, only a few hours before, refused.

But it was only a matter of seconds.

John Grange's fingers were already gliding over the rough bark; and
before Barnett could throw off the horrible mental chains which bound
him, the young man uttered a low, hoarse cry, and fell headlong through
the air.

CHAPTER THREE.

"How do you say it happened?"

Old Tummus was riding in the doctor's gig back to The Hollows after
running across to the village for help; and he now repeated all he knew,
with the additions of sundry remarks about these new-fangled young
"harticult'ral gardeners who know'd everything but their work."

"Come right down on his head, poor lad," he said; "but you'll do your
best for him, doctor: don't you let him slip through your fingers."

The doctor smiled grimly, and soon after drew up at the door in the
garden wall, and hurried through to the bothy where John Gr