“Oh! I did so want to run across him again. I do so long to thank him! Why–why! we might never have escaped from that awful wreck, got out of the zero water, but for him, Una.” The blue eyes were wet now, frankly wet, bluebells by a mountain brook–the little bursting brooklet of feeling within.
“I–I’d like to thank him, too!” gushed Una, with that little fixed star twinkling most radiantly in one dark eye, the slight stand which characterized it only at intense moments when feeling reached indefinite altitudes. “Oh! how glad I am now,” she ran on breathlessly, “that we made Andrew leave the car down in a garage at the Pinnacle’s foot and bring us up here for a sort of picnic supper,” sending a sidelong glance scouting round for the tall, capped figure of the grizzled chauffeur who, a brief ten years before, had been driving his “laird’s” car upon Ben Muir, a heathery mountain of his native Highlands.
Trustworthy as day, a capable driver and zealous Church Elder, he was one to whose guardianship Una Grosvenor, the apple of her parents’ eye, might safely be intrusted with her visiting friend while her father golfed and her mother lunched and played bridge in complacent peace of mind.
“Oh! she’s all right with Andrew; he’s such a true-penny!” was her father’s dictum. “Safer with him, up here, than she would be with maid or housekeeper! And, after that shock in the winter, the doctor wants her to be out of doors among the hills morning, noon and night–practically all the time, if she can!”
Ah! so far, so good. But just at this unprecedented moment of excitement Andrew, the true-penny, had encountered another Scot, who emigrated before he did, and was breezily “clacking” with him at some distance from where two breathlessly expectant girls gazed down upon the black top of the nickum’s head–and at his wheeling shoulders in the great armchair.
“Oh–oh! there he goes–see–curling up his legs, drawing up his feet carefully, turning in the seat–standing up!” cried Pemrose, all Rose at this crisis, prematurely blooming, as if it were June, not May, as she stood on tiptoe to meet a dramatic moment, reveling in the thought that the daredevil did not know what a surprise awaited him on top here, what a welcome–heart-eager gratitude.
She bit her lip, however, upon the impulsive cry, for she saw two girls, younger than herself, with a ten-year-old boy, who had been watching the climber’s feat from a near-by mound, turn and look at her curiously.
They were evidently acquainted with the daring usurper of the Devil’s Chair.
For, having drawn up his legs until his knees touched his chin, then raised himself to a standing position on the grim stone seat, cautiously turning, his strong fingers gripping the granite chair-arms, when his back was to the precipice beneath and his face almost touching the twelve-foot, well-nigh perpendicular rock which he had to climb, he actually had the hardihood to wave his hand to them.
“Now–now comes the ‘scratch’!” he shouted laughingly. “I’m going to hook on to that ‘nick’ in the rock, there, just over my head, and draw myself up. Had to ‘shy’ it coming down–for fear it would catch in my clothing.”