She attempted no reply, as he glided noiselessly away, but her face, could he have seen it, was not devoid of expression.  This was an act of generosity and deliberate courage of the very kind most apt to appeal to her nature, and within her secret heart there was rapidly developing a respect for this man, who with such calm assurance won his own way.  He was strong, forceful, brave,—­Homeric virtues of real worth in that hard life which she knew best.  All this swept across her mind in a flash of revelation while she stood alone, her eyes endeavoring vainly to peer into the gloom.  Then, suddenly, that black curtain was rent by jagged spurts of red and yellow flame.  Dazed for an instant, her heart throbbing wildly to the sharp reports of the rifles, she shrank cowering back, her fascinated gaze fixed on those imp-like figures leaping forward from rock to rock.  Almost with the flash and sound Hampton sprang hastily back and gathered her in his arms.

“Catch hold, Kid, anywhere; only go up, and quick!”

As he thus lifted her she felt the irregularities of rock beneath her clutching fingers, and scrambled instinctively forward along the narrow shelf, and then, reaching higher, her groping hands clasped the roots of a projecting cedar.  She retained no longer any memory for Hampton; her brain was completely terrorized.  Inch by inch, foot by foot, clinging to a fragment of rock here, grasping a slippery branch there, occasionally helped by encountering a deeper gash in the face of the precipice, her movements concealed by the scattered cedars, she toiled feverishly up, led by instinct, like any wild animal desperately driven by fear, and only partially conscious of the real dread of her terrible position.  The first time she became aware that Hampton was closely following was when her feet slipped along a naked root, and she would have plunged headlong into unknown depths had she not come into sudden contact with his supporting shoulder.  Faint and dizzy, and trembling like the leaf of an aspen, she crept forward onto a somewhat wider ledge of thin rock, and lay there quivering painfully from head to foot.  A moment of suspense, and he was outstretched beside her, resting at full length along the very outer edge, his hand closing tightly over her own.

“Remain perfectly quiet,” he whispered, panting heavily.  “We can be no safer anywhere else.”

She could distinguish the rapid pounding of his heart as well as her own, mingled with the sharp intake of their heavy breathing, but these sounds were soon overcome by that of the tumult below.  Shots and yells, the dull crash of blows, the shouts of men engaged in a death grapple, the sharp crackling of innumerable rifles, the inarticulate moans of pain, the piercing scream of sudden torture, were borne upward to them from out the blackness.  They did not venture to lift their heads from off the hard rock; the girl sobbed silently, her slender form trembling; the fingers