he river with anybody else. I
feel safer here."

Vic knew she meant only to be courteous, but the words were comforting.
On the crest of the ledge the fierceness of the storm was revealed.
Great sheets of wind-blown rain were flung athwart the landscape, and
the utter blackness that followed the lightning's glare, and the roaring
of the wind and river were appalling.

In all this tumult, away to the northeast, the beacon light above the
Sunrise dome was cutting the darkness with a steady beam.

"See that light, Elinor? We are not lost. We must get up stream a little
way. Then we'll find the bridge, all right. The crowd will get home
ahead of us, because this is the rough side of the river."

"Oh, what a comfort a light can be!" Elinor murmured as she looked up
and caught the welcome gleam.

As they hurried along, the Sunrise light suddenly disappeared and they
found themselves descending a rough downward way. Presently there
were rock walls on either side hemming them in a narrow crevice in the
ledges. Then the rain ceased and Vic knew they had slidden down into a
rock-covered fissure, that they were getting underground. They tried
to turn back, but the up-climb was impossible, and in the darkness they
could reach nothing but the sharp ledge of the cliff sheer above the
raging river. Entrapped and bewildered, Vic felt cautiously about; but
the only certain things were the straight bluff overhanging the flood,
and the cavernous way leading downward; while the same deluge that was
keeping Vincent Burgess storm-staid on the veranda of the Saxon House,
was beating mercilessly down on Elinor Wream.

"We can't stay here and be threshed to pieces," Vic cried. "This crack
is drier, anyhow, and it must lead to somewhere."

It did lead to what seemed to Elinor an endless length of hideous
uncertainty, until Vic suddenly lost his footing and plunged headlong
down somewhere into the blackness of darkness. Elinor shrieked in terror
and sank down limply on the stone floor of the crevice.

"All a bluff," Vic called up cheerily, in the same startlingly deep
sweet voice that had caught Elinor's ear on the September afternoon
before the door of Sunrise, and out in the edge of her consciousness
the thought played in again, "I'd rather be here with you than over the
river with anybody else. I feel safer here."

"Slide down, Elinor. I'll catch you. It is n't very far, and there's a
little light somewhere."

Elinor slipped blindl