he Eternal!" he suddenly exclaimed. His eye
had just caught sight of the first trailing wreaths of smoke, from up
the cliff. "An auto's gone to smash, down there, or I'm a plute!"

He needed no second thought to hurl him forward to the rescue. At a
smart pace he ran, halloo'ing loudly, to tell the victims--should they
still live--that help was at hand. At his right, extended the wall. At
his left, a grove of sugar-maples, sparsely set, climbed a long slope,
over the ridge of which the descending sun glowed warmly. Somewhat back
from the road, a rough shack which served as a sugar-house for the
spring sap-boiling, stood with gaping door, open to all the winds that
blew. These things he noted subconsciously, as he ran.

Then, all at once, as he rounded a sharp turn, he drew up with a cry.

"Down the cliff!" he exclaimed. "Knocked the wall clean out, and
plunged! Holy Mackinaw, what a smash!"

In a moment he had reached the scene of the catastrophe. His quick eye
took in, almost at a glance, the skidding mark of the wheels, the ragged
rent in the wall, the broken limbs of trees below.

"Some wreck!" he ejaculated, dropping his stick and throwing off his
knapsack. "_Hello, Hello, down there!_" he loudly hailed, scrambling
through the gap.

From below, no answer.

A silence, as of death, broken only by the echo of his own voice, was
all that greeted his wild cry.

[Illustration: He gathered her up as though she had been a child.]

CHAPTER XIV.

THE RESCUE.

Gabriel Armstrong leaped, rather than clambered, through the gap in the
wall, and, following the track of devastation through the trees,
scrambled down the steep slope that led toward the Hudson.

The forest looked as though a car of Juggernaut had passed that way.
Limbs and saplings lay in confusion, larger trees showed long wounds
upon their bark, and here and there pieces of metal--a gray mud-guard, a
car door, a wind-shield frame, with shattered plate glass still clinging
to it--lay scattered on the precipitous declivity. Beside these, hanging
to a branch, Gabriel saw a gaily-striped auto robe; and, further down, a
heavy, fringed shawl.

Again he shouted, holding to a tree-trunk at the very edge of a cliff of
limestone, and peering far down into the abyss where the car had taken
its final plunge. Still no answer. But, from below, the heavy smoke
still rose. And now, peering more keenly, Armstrong caught sight of the
wreck itself.

"There it i