two
good strokes--they're almost in the eddy;" but the next words were frozen
on his lips, for the backwash from a boulder swept away the bows of the
canoe, and the words that followed came hoarse and brokenly, "My God--he's
too late!"

Colonel Carrington was right, for, as held still and spellbound they
watched, the canoe leaped down the entrance rapid and was lost in the mist
of the black canyon. The Colonel said nothing further, though he groaned
aloud, and Lawrence did not care to look at him; but Ormond's face was
ashy until a livid fury filled it as he turned upon the rancher.

"Confusion to you! Why must you stop me then?" he demanded.

"You would only have drowned yourself in the rapid and done nobody any
good," Lawrence said.

"I wish to heaven I had," answered Ormond, with cold deliberateness. "As
it is, you have helped that man to rob me again, even at the last, and I
would give all I have to change places now with him."

Then, while Lawrence wondered what he meant, though when I heard the story
I fully understood, the head of my horse rose for an instant out of the
tumbling waters, sank, and rising, went down again, while a tremor ran
through the Colonel's rigid frame, and he leaned against a hemlock with
great beads of sweat on his forehead. The poor beast had doubtless been
mangled against a boulder, and the sight was horribly suggestive.

"A very grim man," said Lawrence, when he narrated what happened; "but I
felt most cruelly sorry for him. Didn't say very much--his sort never do;
but he was in mortal anguish, and I knew how he would miss the girl."

Colonel Carrington was, nevertheless, the first to master his feelings,
and his voice was steady once more when he turned to Ormond.

"Geoffrey, you will go back and send my sister round with the Indian by
Tomlinson's crossing. Then you will return and overtake us in the ravine
yonder. We are going to follow the crest of the canyon to--to--see what we
can find."

It was a stiff climb up the ravine, trying in places to a mountaineer, but
the old man held close behind his companion, and Lawrence wondered at him.
He also felt sorry for Ormond, whose task it was to overtake them, but
when at last they hurried breathless through the pinewoods toward the edge
of the chasm above the fall, the latter, looking like a ghost, came
panting up with them. Then, standing on the dizzy brink, Colonel
Carrington gazed down at the spout of green water and the whirli