shed me against it,
and from that gleam I gathered the conviction that it was not ordained
for me to perish there. I could not see daylight out of either end of
the canyon, for its walls are winding, and of course I had nothing but
a guess as to how far I had come.

"There was no foothold in the cliffs on either hand that I could see,
and the pounding of that heavy volume of water down the fall of the
canyon seemed to make the cliffs tremble. I had to get ashore against
the cliff-side, somehow, if I ever intended to get out, and I intended
to get out, no two ways about it. I might drown if I plunged in, but I
might not. And I was certain to starve if I stuck to the rock. So I took
off my coat, which the river had spared me, and let myself down from the
lower end of the rock. I had that rolling and thrashing experience all
over again, still not quite so bad, for there was daylight to cheer me
every time my head got clear of the water.

"There's no use pulling the story out. I made it. I landed, and I found
that I could work my way along the side of the cliff and over the fallen
masses by the waterside. It wasn't so bad after that.

"My hope was that I might find a place where a breach in the cliff would
offer me escape that way, but there was none. The strip of sky that I
could see looked no wider than my hand. I saw the light at the mouth of
the canyon when it was beginning to fall dusk in there. I suppose it was
along the middle of the afternoon."

"We were over there about then," said she, "thinking you might have gone
in to try for that reward. If we only had known!"

"You could have come over to the other end with a blanket," said he,
touching her hand in a little communicative expression of thankfulness
for her interest. "There is a little gravelly strand bordering the river
at that end. After its wild plunge it comes out quite docile, and not
half so noisy as it goes in. I reached that strip of easy going just as
it was growing too dark for safe groping over the rocks, and when I got
there my legs bent like hot candles.

"I crawled the rest of the way; when I got out I must have been a sight
to see. I know that I almost frightened out of his remaining wits a
sheep-herder who was watering his flock. He didn't believe that I came
through the canyon; he didn't believe anything I said, not even when I
told him that I was cold and hungry."

"The unfeeling beast!"

"Oh, no; he was just about an average man. He