ir in no danger of fire, then?" asked the practical man.

"We hev hed none,--before we war flunged off'n the bluff we hed
squinched the fire ter pledjure Bob, ez he war afeard Santy Claus would
scorch his feet comin' down the chimbley,--powerful lucky fur we uns;
the fire would hev burnt the house bodaciously."

Kennedy hardly stayed to hear. He was off in a moment, galloping at
frantic speed along the snowy trail scarcely traceable in the sad light
of the gray day; taking short cuts through the densities of the laurel;
torn by jagged rocks and tangles of thorny growths and broken branches
of great trees; plunging now and again into deep drifts above concealed
icy chasms, and rescuing with inexpressible difficulty the floundering,
struggling horse; reaching again the open sheeted roadway, bruised,
bleeding, exhausted, yet furiously plunging forward, rousing the
sparsely settled country-side with imperative insistence for help in
this matter of life or death!

Death, indeed, only,--for the enterprise was pronounced impossible by
those more experienced than Kennedy. Among the men now on the bluff were
several who had been employed in the silver mines of this region, and
they demonstrated conclusively that a rope could not be worked clear of
the obstructions of the face of the rugged and shattered cliffs; that a
human being, drawn from the cabin, strapped in a chair, must needs be
torn from it and flung into the abyss below, or beaten to a frightful
death against the jagged rocks in the transit.

"But not ef the chair war ter be steadied by a guy-rope from--say--from
that thar old pine tree over thar," Kennedy insisted, indicating the
long bole of a partially uprooted and inverted tree on the steeps. "The
chair would swing cl'ar of the bluff then."

"But, Jube, it is onpossible ter git a guy-rope over ter that
tree,--more than a man's life is wuth ter try it."

A moment ensued of absolute silence,--space, however, for a hard-fought
battle. The aspect of that mad world below, with every condition of
creation reversed; a mistake in the adjustment of the winch and gear by
the excited, reluctant, disapproving men; an overstrain on the fibres of
the long-used rope; a slip on the treacherous ice; the dizzy whirl of
the senses that even a glance downward at those drear depths set astir
in the brain,--all were canvassed within his mental processes, all were
duly realized in their entirety ere he said with a spare dull voice a