ide
the bushes and look down. Here, only a few yards away, he saw that
there was a broad shelf some fifty feet below, and along it a mere
thread of water trickled to a lower edge and disappeared, leaving among
the stones amidst which it had meandered patch after patch of richest
green, showing its fertilising power.

That water was tempting in the extreme, for his mouth was dry; he was
faint, and he knew by the position of the sun that he had been
struggling through the dense growth for hours without refreshing
himself, though all the time he had a cake of damper in his pocket,
keeping the powder-flask company.

If he could get down there, he thought, he might have half an hour's
rest, and then tramp back to where he had left Sorrel, and ride gently
home in the cool of the evening.

"And come again." For come again he would till he had found poor
Leather, "unless," he said to himself with a shudder, "he has fallen
down this terrible place."

And yet it was not terrible, he thought the next moment. It was grand,
glorious, lovely, and the shelf below him, with its water, more tempting
than anything he had ever seen before.

"I must get down," he said; and going farther along he sought for a
means, but had not far to go, for he soon grasped the fact that this
shelf was only some eighty or a hundred feet off the top, which had
slipped a little and then stopped. It had broken away, gone down some
fifty feet, and then been checked.

While as he gazed down at the old edge of the precipice, and over it
into the gorge below, he could hear the soft, whistling, humming trickle
of the water, and it increased his eagerness. He must get down, he
thought--but how? There were no overhanging boughs, no roots which had
forced their way between cracks in the rock and gone on down and down
searching for the moisture of that tiny rill which went over the edge to
its present depth; and there were no stout bushes growing in the side
beneath him. All there was clean, broken-away stone, which could only
be descended by stepping from projection to projection, while if any one
slipped--

"Well, what if he did?" said the boy contemptuously, as he gazed down:
"he would, at the most, only get a few scratches and bruises. Here's
the best spot, and I'm going down."

Without further hesitation he laid down his gun, turned upon his breast
and lowered his legs, found footing easy to get upon a ledge, and
lowered himself more and more t