Just what would happen when they reached the bottom of the slope was a very serious question.

CHAPTER IV

A SECOND IDA BELLETHORNE

The ravine was forty feet deep, and although the path, down which the gray horse slid with Betty Gordon on his back, was of sand and gravel only, there were some boulders and thick brush at the bottom that threatened disaster to both victims of the accident.

Swiftly and more swiftly the frightened horse slid, and the girl had no idea what she should do when they came, bumpy-ti-bump to the bottom.

She heard Bob shouting something to her, but she did not immediately comprehend what he said.  Something, she thought it was, about her stirrups.  But this was no time or place to look to see if her stirrup leathers were the proper length or if her feet were firmly fixed in the irons, which both Bob and Uncle Dick had warned her about when first she had begun to ride.

Although she dared not look back, Betty knew that Bob had galloped to the very edge of the ravine and had now flung himself from his saddle.  She heard his boots slam into the sliding gravel of the hill.  He shouted again—­that cheery hail that somehow helped Betty to hold on to her fast vanishing courage.

“Kick your feet out of the stirrups, Betty!”

What he meant finally seeped into Betty’s clouded brain.  She realized that Bob Henderson, her chum, the boy she had learned to have such confidence in, was coming down that bank in mighty strides, prepared to save her if it was possible.

The gray horse was struggling and snorting; he was likely to tumble sideways at any moment.  If he did, and Betty was caught under him——­

But she was not caught in any such crushing pressure.  It was Bob’s arm around her waist that squeezed her.  She had kicked her feet loose of the stirrups, and now Bob, throwing himself backward, tore her out of the saddle.  He fell upon his back, and Betty, struggling and laughing and almost crying, fell on top of him.

“All right, Betty!  All right!” gasped Bob.  “No need to squeal now.”

“Who’s squealing?” she demanded.  “Let me up, do!  Are you hurt, Bob?”

“Only the wind knocked out of me.  Woof!  You all right?”

“Oh, my dear!” shrieked Bobby at the top of the bank.  “Are you killed, Betty?”

“Only half killed,” gasped Betty.  “Don’t worry.  Spread the news.  Elizabeth Gordon, Miss Sharpe’s prize Latin scholar, will yet return to Shadyside to make glad the heart of——­”

“She’s all right,” broke in Tommy Tucker, having dismounted and looking over the brink of the bank.  “She’s trying to be funny.  Her neck isn’t broken.”

“I declare, Tommy!” cried Louise Littell admonishingly, “you sound as though you rather thought her poor little neck ought to be dislocated.”

“Cheese!” gasped Teddy, Tommy’s twin.  “You got that word out of a book, Louise—­you know you did.”