f thirty feet into
the surging waters below the cataract. At his heels were the dogs, in
front of him the two youths ready with another charge of arrows. There
was no way of escape.

"Lie down, my lord! -- quick, lie down!" cried Allan, firing his dart.

The arrow rattled upon the stag's antlers. The stag bounded forward with
one of the hounds upon his back, then stumbled upon his knees. Kenric
rose and ran to dirk him ere he should have time to regain his feet.

"Comeback, come back!" shouted Allan.

But Kenric, little heeding the danger, or not hearing the cry of warning
amid the roaring of the water, was about to draw his dirk, when the stag
fell over with the weight of the second hound. One of his antler points
caught in the string of Kenric's bow.

Then Allan Redmain saw a sight that filled him with dismay. Kenric,
still holding his bow that was entangled in the stag's horns, lost his
footing; the stag rolled over; and Kenric fell, with his legs astride of
the animal's belly. Then all four -- Kenric, the stag, and the two dogs
-- struggling each with his own purpose, slipped swiftly down the
sloping precipice, and plunged into the deep and surging linn below the
foaming waterfall.

Allan Redmain, alone now upon that narrow path, uttered a loud cry as he
saw his young master disappear through the mist of spray that rose from
below the cataract. Well did he know that even if Earl Kenric had not
been killed, he yet was unable to swim.

Thoughts more dreadful than he had ever known coursed through Allan's
mind at that moment. Kenric the young king, the only hope of Bute,
killed? and he, Allan Redmain, had not saved him!

He looked around for help. In that desolate place what help could he
expect? But he tarried not long to think of how he should act. At the
risk of his own life he was bound to do what he could. Grasping his
longbow in his two hands and using it as a skid, and digging his heels
firmly into the stony ground of the sloping precipice, he went down foot
by foot, now swaying this way and now that as the loose stones slipped
before his feet. Down, down he went until he came at last to the level
top of a steep rock that stood over the brink of the deep linn.

In the eddying water that swirled and boiled as in a cauldron at the
base of the cataract he saw one of the stag hounds struggling, trying
vainly to keep its head above the surface; but nowhere Kenric, nowhere
even the stag. He lay down upon the