ersons, and I beg
you not to go to the study of this clergyman, unless some older friend
goes with you on every occasion, and sits through the visit. I must
speak plainly to you, my dear, as I have a right to. If the minister
has anything of importance to say, let it come through the lips of some
mature person. It may lose something of the fervor with which it would
have been delivered at first hand, but the great rules of Christian life
are not so dependent on the particular individual who speaks them, that
you must go to this or that young man to find out what they are. If to
any man, I should prefer the old gentleman whom you have mentioned in
your letters, Father Pemberton. You understand me, my dear girl, and the
subject is not grateful. You know how truly I am interested in all that
relates to you,--that I regard you with an affection which--

HELP! HELP! HELP!

A cry as of a young person's voice was heard faintly, coming from the
direction of the river. Something in the tone of it struck to his heart,
and he sprang as if he had been stabbed. He flung open his chamber
window and leaped from it to the ground. He ran straight to the bank
of the river by the side of which the village of Alderbank was built, a
little farther down the stream than the house in which he was living.

Everybody that travels in that region knows the beautiful falls which
break the course of the river just above the village; narrow and swift,
and surrounded by rocks of such picturesque forms that they are sought
and admired by tourists. The stream was now swollen, and rushed in
a deep and rapid current over the ledges, through the rocky straits,
plunging at last in tumult and foam, with loud, continuous roar, into
the depths below the cliff from which it tumbled.

A short distance above the fall there projected from the water a rock
which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, hoarded
a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support
a decent vegetable existence. The high waters had nearly submerged it,
but a few slender twigs were seen above their surface.

A skiff was lying close to this rock, between it and the brink of the
fall, which was but a few rods farther down. In the skiff was a youth
of fourteen or fifteen years, holding by the slender twigs, the boat
dragging at them all the time, and threatening to tear them away and go
over the fall. It was not likely that the boy would come