hould the tough fibres of one of those
gigantic roots tear out from the loosened friable soil, should the
elastic supporting branches barely sway in some errant gust of wind, the
little box would fall hundreds of feet, cracked like a nut, shattering
against the rocks of the levels below.

He wondered if the inmates yet lived,--he pitied them still more if
they only existed to realize their peril, to await in an anguish of
fear their ultimate doom. Perhaps--he felt he was but trifling with
despair--some rescue might be devised.

Such a weird cry he set up on the brink of the mountain!--full of
horror, grief, and that poignant hope. The echoes of the Gap seemed
reluctant to repeat the tones, dull, slow, muffled in snow. But a sturdy
halloo responded from the window, uppermost now, for the house lay
on its side amongst the boughs. Kennedy thought he saw the pallid
simulacrum of a face.

"This be Jube Kennedy," he cried, reassuringly. "I be goin' ter fetch
help,--men, ropes, and a windlass."

"Make haste then,--we uns be nigh friz."

"Ye air in no danger of fire, then?" asked the practical man.

"We hev hed none,--before we war flunged off'n the bluff we hed
squinched the fire ter pledjure Bob, ez he war afeard Santy Claus would
scorch his feet comm' down the chimbley,--powerful lucky fur we uns; the
fire would hev burnt the house bodaciously."

Kennedy hardly stayed to hear. He was off in a moment, galloping at
frantic speed along the snowy trail scarcely traceable in the sad light
of the gray day; taking short cuts through the densities of the laurel;
torn by jagged rocks and tangles of thorny growths and broken branches
of great trees; plunging now and again into deep drifts above concealed
icy chasms, and rescuing with inexpressible difficulty the floundering,
struggling horse; reaching again the open sheeted roadway, bruised,
bleeding, exhausted, yet furiously plunging forward, rousing the
sparsely settled country-side with imperative insistence for help in
this matter of life or death!

Death, indeed, only,--for the enterprise was pronounced impossible by
those more experienced than Kennedy. Among the men now on the bluff were
several who had been employed in the silver mines of this region, and
they demonstrated conclusively that a rope could not be worked clear of
the obstructions of the face of the rugged and shattered cliffs; that
a human being, drawn from the cabin, strapped in a chair, must needs be
to