A Gamble with Life

by Silas K. Hocking

Then he shut his teeth grimly and began the ascent. "I'll save her or die in the attempt," he said to himself, with a fierce and determined look in his eyes.

Then something seemed to whisper in his ear: "Why trouble about a single life? One life more or less can make no difference. If people like to fling away their life in foolish adventures, let them do it; why should you worry?"

But his philosophy found no response in his heart just then. His own life might be of little consequence, but this fair creature must be saved at all costs.

He made his way up the face of the cliff surely and steadily. "It is easier than I thought," he said. Then he came to a sudden stop, while a groan escaped his lips.

"I cannot do it," he gasped; "nobody can do it. Without ropes and ladders she is doomed."

CHAPTER IV

PAYING THE PENALTY

When Madeline Grover got used to the cliffs they did not seem nearly so forbidding or dangerous as at the first. Exploring the caves and crannies for sea shells and lichen and gulls' eggs became a favourite pastime of hers. To stay within the precincts of Trewinion Park she declared was like being in prison. To wander across the level lawns, or through the woods by well-kept paths, was an exercise altogether too tame and unexciting. She loved something that had in it a spice of adventure. To do something that nobody else had ever done was very much more to her taste.

Sir Charles took her to task gently on several occasions. It was not quite the proper thing to go out alone and unattended. She would need to put a curb on her exuberant and adventurous spirit. She would have to remember that she was no longer in America, where, in his judgment, girls had far too much freedom. She must learn to fall into English ways and customs, with a good deal more to the same effect.

Madeline always listened patiently and good-humouredly to all Sir Charles had to say, and even promised him that she would be all he could desire; but she generally forgot both the lecture and the promise five minutes later. She had been used all her life to go her own way. At home, in America, she received her own friends of both sexes without reference to her father or mother. A liberty of action had been allowed her that seemed almost shocking to Sir Charles and Lady Tregony, and now that she had come to live in England for an indefinite period it was all but impossible for her to drop into English ways at once.