Beth had forgotten all danger to herself.  She had ceased to tremble.  She paid out the rope with commendable promptness.

“Does it reach?” she cried.  “Can you get it?”

He could not.  Though sufficiently long it was ten feet away, on his right.  His seconds were growing fearfully precious.

“Just shift it over, more towards Elsa,” he called, still calmly.  “Move it about ten feet.”

It began to approach him jerkily.  It halted, then once more it moved.  The shrub in his grasp gave out an inch, and was coming from its anchorage.  Then his fist was closed on the rope.

“All right!” he called.  “Let go—­and stand aside!”

“But—­oh, if the rock shouldn’t hold!” cried the girl.  “Are you sure it won’t pull over?”

He was not at all certain of the boulder.  This explained his directions, “stand aside!” If it came—­it must not involve the girl.  There was nothing for him but to trust to its weight against his own.  He was strong.  He began to come up, bracing a foot against the crumbling wall, winding the rope around one of his legs—­or his leg around the rope, and resting whensoever he could.

Beth stood there, nearly as tense as the rope.  Her brown eyes were fixed on the bedded boulder; her face was more gray than its bulk.

At the edge, where the lasso impinged upon the granite, small particles were breaking and falling ominously.  Scarcely daring to breathe, as she felt how the man was toiling up from the maw of the chasm, Beth could not bear to look where he must come—­if come he ever should.

It seemed an eternity of waiting.  At last, when new misgivings had seized upon her heart, she heard his labored breathing.  Even then she did not turn.  She feared to watch his efforts; she feared to break the spell.  A minute later she heard his even voice.

“It’s a wonderful view—­from down below.”

The glad, eager light in her eyes, which his eyes met from the brink, put strength in both his arms.  He came up to safety in an outburst of vigor that was nothing short of magnificent.

“Oh!” said the girl, and she leaned against the wall in a sudden need for support.

“I really had no intention of—­deserting like that,” panted Van, with a smile that was just a trifle forced.  “But it’s so much easier to—­drop into a habit than it—­ever is to get out.”

She made no reply, but remained where she was, weakly leaning against the wall and slowly regaining the strength she had lost at the moment of beholding him safe.  She was not the fainting kind, but she was human—­womanly human.

Van began immediately to release and re-coil the rope.

“Too bad to throw away a pony like that,” he resumed regretfully.  “I always intended, if he died a Christian death, to have his hide tanned for a rug.”

He was saying anything, no matter what, to dissipate the reactionary collapse into which he feared the girl was falling.