However, it was only an instant because, as Howard Brent saw them, Ralph and Peggy appeared to slip over the side of the precipice together.
Howard was a few yards further back, yet in the briefest possible time he had dropped flat on his hands and knees and crawled out on the crumbling ledge.
There had been no outcry except Ralph’s first exclamation of horror. But, how far down they had fallen, Howard Brent could not discover until he, too, was able to look over the side of the cliff.
Then he discovered that Peggy was only a few feet below, and that Ralph Marshall was just beneath her. But Ralph had released his clutch—it was Peggy Webster who was clinging tenaciously to him. She had managed to get one hand inside his coat, so that she was holding Ralph suspended as if he had been a wooden image.
This would not have been possible except for the fact that Peggy’s other arm was wound about a small tree, growing upright among the rocks as serenely as if it had been planted in the earth.
As the girl slid down, this tree had been directly in her way, so that it was intuitive to seize hold on it. The strange fact was that Ralph Marshall had not made the same effort as he went past. But the truth was, the back of Ralph’s head had struck a heavy stone as he went over and he had almost at once lost consciousness. Yet his weight was not altogether held up by Peggy. Fortunately, a rock jutting out from below gave a kind of resting place. But Peggy had to keep his body in position. When she let go Ralph must fall face forward.
And Peggy could not hold on much longer.
Howard Brent realized that he must do something at once. Yet what was he to do?
CHAPTER XII
The Man From Above
There are times when circumstances act in one’s favor with surprising quickness.