thicket and stood upon the bank of a deep stream
which rushed turbulently along and dropped over a ridge, falling
sixty or seventy feet into a cup-like hollow in the rock.

Ralph uttered a cry of delight. "Why, it's my own waterfall! I've
been wandering in a big circle all this while, and here I am not
far from my boulder where---ouch!" The sentence ended in a loud
wail of agony, for, taking a step forward, the young wayfarer's
foot had slipped on a loose stone. His ankle was severely wrenched.

For a few moments the pain was intense, almost unendurable. Poor
Ralph groaned aloud and sank down on the ground, biting his lips
in trying to keep tears of agony from welling to his eyes. How
could he walk the remaining distance home? Even with an improvised
crutch made from a forked branch of some tree, it would be well-nigh
impossible to travel up and down the stony grades that stretched
between the place where he had met with this unfortunate accident
and the farmhouse.

"Oh, if Keno had only not broken away!"

The futile wish was maddening in his present plight. He showered
sharp epithets upon the absent pony, until he remembered the probability
that Keno's return without him would be the means of sending some
one to the rescue. This was some consolation, though it was but
cold comfort in view of the fact that, had Keno not bolted, this
mishap would not have occurred.

However, there was no help for it now. Meanwhile, the badly sprained
ankle was throbbing painfully, and Ralph's next thought was to
thrust it, without taking off his shoe, into the cold running
water in order to check the swelling. He held his foot there,
shivering with relief, then he stretched himself out on the bank of
the stream, in the warm sunlight. Whereupon, with anxious mind and
weary body soothed by the loud splash of the waterfall, with the
pain in his ankle considerably relieved, and with a soft, grassy
nook beside a rock offering repose, it was not very strange that,
after closing his eyes drowsily, Ralph sank into a troubled slumber.

When he awoke, the sun was only a little way above the tops of the
highest trees, and long golden shafts of light were slanting down
through the branches, making an intricate tracery of shadows on the
ground. The air was beginning to have a decided chill, for the
wind had shifted to the west and was blowing the spray of the
waterfall into Ralph's face.

Strange that no one had come, in search