He is coming so much nearer that he understands her emprise. A child has fallen and has slipped a little way down the bank, where a slender birch sapling has caught her, and she is quite wedged in. The tree sways and bends, the child begins to cry. The roots surely are giving way, and if the child should fall again she will go over the rocks, down on the stony shore. Floyd Grandon watches in a spell-bound way, coming nearer, and suddenly realizes that the tree will give way before he can reach her. But the girl climbs up from rock to rock, until she is almost underneath, then stretches out her arms.
"I shall pull you down here," she says. "There is a place to stand. Let go of everything and come."
The tree itself lets go, but it still forms a sort of bridge, over which the child comes down, caught in the other's arms. She utters a little shriek, but she is quite safe. Her hat has fallen off, and goes tumbling over the rocks. He catches a glint of fair hair, of a sweet face he knows so well, and his heart for a moment stops its wonted beating.
He strides over to them as if on the wings of the wind. They go down a little way, when they pause for strength. Cecil is crying now.
"Cecil," he cries in a sharp tone,—"Cecil, how came you here?"
Cecil buries her face in her companion's dress and clings passionately to her. The girl, who is not Jane, covers her with a defiant impulse of protection, and confronts the intruder with a brave, proud face of gypsy brilliance, warm, subtile, flushing, spirited, as if she questioned his right to so much as look at the child.
"Cecil, answer me! How came you here?" The tone of authority is deepened by the horrible fear speeding through his veins of what might have happened.
"You shall not scold her!" She looks like some wild, shy animal protecting its young, as she waves him away imperiously with her little hand. "How could she know that the treacherous top of the cliff would give way? She was a good, obedient child to do just what I told her, and it saved her. See how her pretty hands are all scratched, and her arm is bleeding."
He kneels at the feet of his child's brave savior, and clasps his arms around Cecil. "My darling," and there is almost a sob in his voice, "my little darling, do not be afraid. Look at papa. He is so glad to find you safe."
"Is she your child,—your little girl?" And the other peers into his face with incredulous curiosity.