piercing cry
from Una--Una whose delicate face was white and square now as the
marshmallows in the box under her arm, with which she had bribed her
friend to the madcap feat of sliding backward down a twelve-foot rock
and sitting in the Devil's Chair.

And Andrew the Scot saw the danger, heard it skirling in his ears, for
he had been brought up among mountains.

He did not quite see what good he could do, that staid Church Elder, by
joining the girl in the Devil's Seat.

But he came of a Campbell clan which never flinched.

He was preparing to slide down, himself, when an arm--a left elbow
rather--thrust him rudely back.

"T-take hold of this rope-end. Throw yourself flat on the ground there.
Sit on him, you girls, so that he may not be drawn over!" cried a voice,
pointed, vigorous.

Pem knew that it was the fiery voice of the nickum, the broad-shouldered
youth, who had sat in the chair before her, whose crowing had been
responsible for her feat.

Her colorless face was turned upward then and she had seen him push up
the lower folds of his sweater with his left hand--even while its elbow
sent the chauffeur back--and while his right, lightning-like, uncoiled a
rope, a lariat, worn under it around his waist.

It was then that he shouted to her to "keep cool"; and that she, turning
her head aside against the rock, became a living effigy of the Thunder
Bird.

Not waiting to make the rope fast around his own body--or his body fast
to it--he slid down.

The next moment he was standing beside her in the chair.

"Ha! So the 'pep' was in the wrong box that time," he said coolly.

"Yes. Last time it was in the ice-box," snapped she, as coolly, not to
be outdone. "So you _did_ remember--know me--us!"

"How could I help--remembering--that icy train-wreck?" He was slipping
the rope in a noose under her arms. "Perhaps, some day.... Well! I'm
glad to be 'Jack at a Pinch' again, anyway."

"R-ready!" he shouted then.

And Pem was drawn up, to face a Highland squall from Andrew.

"Hoot! lassie, an' air ye sech a fechless tomboy that a mon mun keep his
een sticket on ye a' the time?" the Scot angrily demanded. "How cud ye
be sech a nickum as to try sitting in yon--Deev's Chair?"

"Ask--ask the other nickum; he did it first," flung back the rescued
one.

But under cover of the broad scolding, the other, the Jack at a
Pinch--friend in need for the second time--had again slipped off,
without a word from either of the