t beautiful face, flushing and paling with a coming
agony, looking up at him; and presently two trembling hands made
those mystic signs which are the primal language of the soul. Hilton
interpreted to him this: "I have sent for you. There is no man so big or
strong as you in the north. I did not know that I should ever ask you to
redeem the note. I want my gift, and I will give you your paper with the
Queen's head on it. Those little lives, those pretty little dears, you
will not see them die. If there is a way, any way, you will save them.
Sometimes one man can do what twenty cannot. You were my wedding-gift: I
claim you now."

She paused, and then motioned to the nurse, who laid the piece of brown
paper in Macavoy's hand. He held it for a moment as delicately as if it
were a fragile bit of glass, something that his huge fingers might crush
by touching. Then he reached over and laid it on the bed beside her and
said, looking Hilton in the eyes, "Tell her, the slip av a saint she is,
if the breakin' av me bones, or the lettin' av me blood's what'll set
all right at Champak Hill, let her mind be aisy--aw yis!"

Soon afterwards they were all on their way--all save Hilton, whose duty
was beside this other danger, for the old nurse said that, "like as
not," her life would hang upon the news from Champak Hill; and if ill
came, his place was beside the speechless traveller on the Brink.

In a few hours the rescuers stood on the top of Champak Hill, looking
down. There stood the little house, as it were, between two dooms. Even
Pierre's face became drawn and pale as he saw what a very few hours or
minutes might do. Macavoy had spoken no word, had answered no
question since they had left the Post. There was in his eye the large
seriousness, the intentness which might be found in the face of a brave
boy, who had not learned fear, and yet saw a vast ditch of danger at
which he must leap. There was ever before him the face of the dumb
wife; there was in his ears the sound of pain that had followed him from
Hilton's house out into the brilliant day.

The men stood helpless, and looked at each other. They could not say
to the river that it must rise no farther, and they could not go to the
house, nor let a rope down, and there was the crumbled moiety of
the hill which blocked the way to the house: elsewhere it was sheer
precipice without trees.

There was no corner in these hills that Macavoy and Pierre did not know,
and at las