In love's hands

by Bertha M. Clay

Thank Heaven, she was still there—still clinging to the friendly roots. But her head had dropped on her shoulder, her fortitude was fast failing, and she was moaning piteously. She must have fallen ere long if Frank Dormer had not climbed quickly to her side and thrown his sustaining arm around her.

He was strong, agile, and a practiced climber, but he found it no easy task to descend the slippery cliff encumbered with Florence. But she was perfectly passive in his hands, and, encouraged by his hopeful words, moved when he told her, or stepped where he directed, and in the course of a little while was safely lowered to a mossy boulder large enough to form a seat for them both.

Here he laved her face and hands with the cool water that rippled around their feet, and supported her until the color came back to her cheek. Then she looked up at the spot from which she had slipped, at the small tufts of heather which had saved her from instant destruction; and imagining to herself the fate she had escaped, as well as the anguish and horror it would have inflicted on her parents, she leaned her face against his shoulder and began to cry softly. Florence Heriton was a child no longer. She realized in that moment—although, perhaps, she would have been unable to define her feelings—something of the value and solemnity attached to the Creator’s great gifts, life and health, and of the necessity of so using them that when they are withdrawn from us we may feel that they have not been wasted.

“Mr. Dormer, I want to thank you,” she said at last; “but when I try, the words choke me, and yet I know that you saved me, and——”

“My dear little Florence,” he said hastily, “I have as much to be thankful for in your escape as you have. I should not have permitted you to go so near the edge of that precipice alone. How could I have returned to the priory if—if anything had happened to you?”

He drew her almost convulsively to his bosom. He had never guessed till now how dear this little creature was becoming to him. But, ashamed of his emotion, he quickly released her, and assisted her to rise.

“We must hasten home, or there will be some wondering at our long absence.”

“And mamma will be uneasy, Mr. Dormer. How shall I tell her what has happened?”

“Do not tell her at all until I have gone away, and you can speak of it calmly. And promise me, Florence, that you will never expose yourself to such peril again.”

The promise was given, and then both were silent until they had nearly reached the house. But the sob that broke at intervals from the young girl’s lips, and the drops that glittered on her long eyelashes, told how busily her thoughts were at work.