Presently, his feet reached the brow of the cliff, passed beyond it, hung in space. The men watching from above, let the rope slide still more slowly. Now his middle was at the brink. He held to the rope with his right hand. With his left he fended himself from the cliff. He looked down. For an instant, accustomed though he was to the high places among the mountain crags, his senses reeled before the impression of unsubstantial vastness. Out beyond him was nothingness for what seemed endless distance. Straight below was the sheer wall of the precipice, with hardly a rift for five hundred feet. There a ledge showed dimly. Then, again, a half-thousand feet of vertical rocks to the valley.
But the vertigo passed in that single instant. His vision cleared. And he saw her. He heard her, too, in the same moment. Here, the cliff was not quite perpendicular. She had slid, rather than fallen, to a resting place. She was not seriously injured. It was hardly a score of feet from the top of the cliff to the tiny shelf of rock on which she lay. This was less than a yard in width. A bit of pine shrub jutted from it courageously, held by its roots burrowing in secret fissures of the rock. A log, rolled down by some amusement-seeker on the crest, had lodged on the outer edge of the shelf. The miniature 265 pine held one end of it; the other was wedged in a crack of the precipice. The log lay like a paling to the narrow shelf. Within that meager shelter, Plutina crouched. Beyond her the ledge narrowed, and ascended to where the cliff was broken. Thus the dog had mounted.
The girl’s face was uplifted, pallid, with burning eyes fast on the lover who descended to her. Her expression showed rapture, but no surprise that this rescuer should be her beloved. The fairy crystal was competent to work any wonder. Zeke, spinning slowly with the twisting vine, thus swinging in the void between heaven and earth, felt, nevertheless, the thrill of passionate adoration. She was even more beautiful than he remembered her.
The shelf, though narrowing, ran toward him. Soon, his feet touched it. At the relief from his weight, the rope was no longer paid out, though held taut. With its aid he traversed the ledge, and reached the shelf where the girl knelt. He knelt beside her, and, without a word, their lips met and clung. There, amid the perils of the precipice, they were in heaven.
For that matter, little speech passed between them afterward. They needed none. Zeke adjusted the rope about her, kissed her, and gave the signal to haul away.
With his heart in his eyes, he watched the swaying 266 form rise, and was inexpressibly relieved when he saw her clear the brim safely. There was a short interval. Then the rope came dangling down, and drew him back to safety. Again the lovers were in each other’s arms. The terror and the agony were forgotten. The bliss remained.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Marshal Stone and Brant were to return together to North Wilkesboro’ where the latter would take the train for home. Uncle Dick had offered them horses for the ride. The two men, somewhat in advance of the remainder of the party after the descent of Stone Mountain, had come near the Higgins’ cabin, when the marshal spoke with a display of embarrassment: