ore. Can you hold
on?"

Mark made no reply, for no words would come. Hope had sprung up at the
possibility of escape, for life seemed then to be very sweet, but there
was a bitterness to dull the bright thought, for the lad felt that it
was the hated enemy of his house who was trying to help.

Then a dull feeling of apathy, as if he had been half stunned, came over
him as he hung there in a terribly cramped position, with his face
pressed against the wall.

And now, as if his hearing had become sharpened, the murmur of the
rushing river came up quite loudly, and the wind seemed to be gathering
force, while all this was, as it were, preparatory to his falling
headlong down. Then he must have lost his senses for some little time,
for the next thing he heard was a voice crying out, in tones full of
despair,--

"Too short, too short, Ram!"

"Ay, so it be. Good ten foot."

"Could I help him if you lowered me down?"

"Lower you down? Are you mad? I couldn't hold you; and you'd break
your neck."

Mark heard every word now, for his senses had suddenly recovered their
tone and something more.

Then what seemed to be another long space of time elapsed, and Ralph
shouted to him,--

"This rope is too short, but there'll be another here soon."

Mark could make no reply, and he hung there, listening to the murmur of
voices once more. Then the rush of the river sounded like the distant
boom of thunder. There was a loud _cizz_, _cizz_, going on somewhere on
the cliff face from a cricket, and the birds were singing more loudly
than he ever remembered to have heard them before.

Once more his senses must have left him and come back, for he heard the
voice above louder than ever, followed by Ralph shouting,--

"Can you tie the rope round you?"

Mark could not answer for some little time; then his lips parted, and he
gasped out the one word,--

"No."

A sharp rustling followed, as of a rope being rapidly drawn up. Then it
was lowered again; and as Mark strained his eyes round into the left
corners to get a glimpse, he saw a loop swinging to and fro, and it
struck him again and again; but those who lowered it, in the hope of
noosing the lad and drawing him up, soon found that the bush and the
sufferer's position precluded this.

"Can you push your arms through the loop, and hang on?" cried Ralph now.

"No," was the discouraging reply, for Mark fully realised the fact that
if he loosened his desperate hold f