preading rock.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

RIVAL DOCTORS.

For a few moments Scoodrach was as if frozen. He sat gazing at the
rushing water, and then he sprang up and dashed past Max, shouting,--

"Come on! come on pefore he's trooned."

Max rushed after him, following the best way he could, for Scoodrach had
disappeared among the low growth of hazel, and it was only by listening
to the sound that he was able to make out the way the young gillie had
gone.

The distance was only some fifty yards down, through a depression which
led round to a kind of shelf just level with the top of the huge mass of
rock on to which the water fell, and Max forgot the danger in the
excitement, as he reached Scoodrach, who was standing holding on by the
thin branch of a birch tree which had grown outward, and hung drooping
over the great hollow below, and so near to the falling foam that its
outer leaves were sprinkled with the spray.

As Max crept to his side, Scoodrach gave him a horrified look, and
pointed at something in the bubbling water at the edge of the basin.

"What'll she do?" he cried despairingly; "if she climbs along the tree,
she canna chump it. Oh, look, look! Maister Ken! Maister Ken!"

Even if it had been possible, there was no time to render help, for, as
they gazed wildly at the basin into which the clear, smooth jet of water
fell, they saw that the apparently inanimate body of Kenneth was borne
nearer and nearer to the edge of the stone, and then slowly onward, to
glide over in the spreading veil, and then disappear in the foam and
mist far below.

"Pack again and doon to the bottom!" yelled Scoodrach, and he rushed by
Max so fiercely that he had to clutch at and hold on by a sapling to
prevent his own fall headlong into the watery hollow.

Max drew himself safely to the perpendicular wall, and crept back now
along the rugged ledge, which had not impressed him with its risky
nature before, and the perspiration stood out clammily on his temples as
he reached the place where he had begun to descend.

He was here in a dense growth of nut and birch, and he listened vainly
for the rustling made by Scoodrach as he ran down.

There was the dull roar of the falls behind him, and then a loud shout,
and either an echo or one in answer; but that was all; and a horrible
feeling of misery and despair at his helplessness came over the lad, as
he thought the worst, and of how terrible it would be to go back to the
castl