illed with it, faintly gibbered the one word:
"C-caught!"

"'_Caught!_' Oh! Stud, you warned him; it's his own doing. Let
those other two boys--his friends--climb up to him! Well--if you
feel--you--must?"

Jessie's cry gibbered in agony in her throat, too, liquid as the
thrush-tone in terror for its mate. But it struck a high note at the
end.

For Stud's hand was groping mechanically for the bright little lamp
above his forehead, as if for inspiration, his left for the lariat at
his waist, in defiance of his threat that the desperado in the "pot"
might have tears in his eyes before he would help him.

But there was something worse than cave-tears in question now--of that
Studart felt sure.

And Pem, watching,--Jessie, too--caught from an entering shaft of
day-light which shivered as if aghast, the reflection of the tightening
glow upon his young face--the waggish features of the Henkyl Hunter!

And she recognized it, by the feeling of her stiff, cold cheeks, as she
clapped her hands to them--did Toandoah's little chum--for the glow
which had electrified her own when she fought her way out of a swamped
Pullman, saving her friend, driving it into the teeth of the flood, and
of the World, too, that neither her father's honor, nor his
invention--nor anything he ever turned out--was a Quaker gun; letting
fly with it faintly at a rescuing youth, too, when she bade him "take
Una first."

For by that glow as by an altar-lamp, in whose gleam she had worshiped
before she saw as the strong boy's hand went automatically to his
equipment that lamp and lariat were nothing--nothing--"without the heart
of a Scout!"

CHAPTER XIV

STOUTHEART

"W-wedged!... Wedged!"

Now--now it was another word which jabbered faintly in the dark
fissure's mouth! A girl caught it--or thought she did.

"_Wedged!_" she echoed wildly. "Caught! Oh, maybe--maybe--there's
nothing in there but Ruddy himself!"

"Maybe--so!" Stud panted heavily while, across an inner, gaping hollow,
the next words took a giant stride to his lips: "Anyhow--I'm going up!"

"Oh--Studley!" But beyond this one faint cry, Jessie, stanch little
partner,--the girl behind the lines,--said no more to hinder him now, as
she watched the scout detach his little lamp from his hatbrim and hook
it on to his khaki breast.

With it glowing there, a headlight for his gallant heart, Stud set
himself to climb. Standing upon the shoulders of two brother scouts, in
his belt