that she saw Bullion
Ravine ahead of her, and the swaying high trestle over which the flume
is carried.

Split's malicious face as that most sure-footed of Madigans touched the
first plank made Sissy realize the test to which she was to be put. Her
terror of giddy heights was treated as an absurd affectation by the
steady-headed Madigans, and as such requiring discipline, which, with
truly sisterly foresight, Split had provided. She ran across now with
the joy of a thing that feels itself flying. Jack Cody turned a
handspring in the very middle; and the sight so nauseated Sissy that she
had to stand aside and let those immediately behind her pass first. Yet
she dared not remain till the last, for a panicky picture in her mind
showed her to herself paralyzed forever on the brink. As she put her
foot on the first board, beneath which she could hear the running water
chuckling and gurgling as it ran, she swore to herself that she would
not look down. And, indeed, she did keep her eyes on Crosby Pemberton's
straw hat, as he walked some distance in front of her. But the moment
his foot touched the ground on the other side, the light structure,
relieved of his weight, changed its rhythmic swaying, which had measured
the steady strength of his step. Its rebound, exaggerated by Sissy's
tense nerves, seemed sickeningly high; its fall ghastly low. Swung there
from mountain to mountain, its slender supports looked frail as a
spider's woof, and seemed to tremble with every gasping breath she drew.
In spite of herself, her eye caught the silvery glitter of the thread of
water far below in the stony bed of the nearly dry creek.

It was all over with Sissy. Trembling with terror, she sat down,
clutching the edge of the board beneath her, the world swimming away
before her shut eyes, just as it did when one looked too long through a
knot-hole at the flowing race in the flume beneath.

Irene's giggle came faintly to her; she was too terrified to resent it.
The murmur of voices that called her name, encouragingly, warningly,
angrily, was not so loud as the chuckling of the water in the box which
seemed to hurry her senses away. She lived through years of agony, in
which she found herself wishing that she could only fall and end it.
Then she felt the trestle bound beneath her, and she was waked by the
touch of Crosby's hand.

"Get up!" he said in a tone of command that reminded her of that
grenadier his mother.

She opened her eyes