The afternoon was hot, and the roar of the river in the depths below emphasized the drowsy stillness of the hillside and climbing bush, when Brooke stood on the little jutting crag above the canyon. Two hundred feet above him rose a wall of fissured rock, but a gully, down which the white thread of a torrent frothed, split through that grim battlement, and already a winding strip of somewhat perilous pathway had been cut out of and pinned against the side of the chasm. Men with hammers and shovels were busy upon it, and the ringing of the drills broke sharply through the deep pulsations of the flood, while several more were clustered round the foot of an iron column, which rose from the verge of the crag, where the rock fell in one tremendous sweep to the dim green river. Close beside it, and overhung by the rock wall, stood Brooke's double tent, for, absorbed as he had become in the struggle with the natural difficulties that must be faced and surmounted at every step, he lived by his work, and when he had risen that morning the sun had not touched the dim white ramparts beyond the climbing pines. He was just then, however, not watching his workmen, but looking up the gorge, and a little thrill of pleasure ran through him when two figures in light draperies appeared at the head of it. Then he went up at a pace which Jimmy, who grinned as he watched him, wondered at, and stopped a trifle breathless beside the two women who awaited him above. "I was almost afraid you would not come," he said. "You are sure you would care to go down now you have done so?" Mrs. Devine gazed down into the tremendous depths with something that suggested a shiver, but Barbara laughed. "Of course," she said. "Those men go up and down with big loads every day, don't they?" "They have to, and that naturally makes a difference," said Brooke, with a little smile. "Then we can go down because we wish to, which is, in the case of most people, even a better reason." Mrs. Devine appeared a trifle uncertain, and her face expressed rather resignation than any special desire to make the descent, but she permitted Brooke to assist her down the zig-zag trail, while Barbara followed with light, fearless tread. Once they entered the gully, they could not, however, see the canyon, which, in the elder lady's case, at least, made the climb considerably easier, and they reached the tent without misadventure. The door was triced up to form an outer shelter, and Barbara was a trifle astonished when Brooke signed them to enter.