He looked down at the ledges still below him. The noose of the rope was on the rock point above, and he had no rope now with which to make a further descent. How he was ever to get down into the cañon without a rope he did not know. “We’ll hope the fire won’t trouble the noose up there,” he said to her; “and, if it doesn’t, when the fire dies down we can climb up the rope and get out above. It seems impossible to descend into the cañon.” “It seems to me I can never climb another yard,” Lena declared, so thoroughly fatigued that she was almost crying. CHAPTER XXXII. THE GIRL AND THE EMERALDS. The fire roared on the pine levels overhead, and the girl and the scout whom she had rescued from the fire talked. They had much to talk about beyond the fact that she had saved the scout, and the inevitable discussion as to how they were to get off the ledge where they now were. “Lena,” he said finally, and his tone showed hesitation, “I suppose you are strong enough to hear unpleasant news?” Her face, already pale, grew paler. “My uncle?” she gasped. “Something has happened to him!” The scout put his hand into an inner pocket and brought out a filled buckskin bag. “He asked me to send, or get, this to you.” She looked at him, trembling. “He--he is not dead?” “Yes, Lena,” said the kind-hearted scout, his own voice shaking. “I am sorry to have to tell you that he died two days ago. You know he was not well when he last saw your father. I’ve been doing some scouting work in the mountains. Thinking to visit him, I called at the cabin, and found him seriously ill with fever, in fact, at the point of death. I did all I could for him, but it was little enough, and he died. He gave me this package to give to you, or send to you; for he thought you had started for the East long ago. He thought you would persuade your father to give up his mine and go home--he had never heard of John Forest’s death.” He put the buckskin bag in her trembling hands. When she opened it she found it filled with what seemed to be bits of broken green glass. “Emeralds, and as fine as you’ll ever see,” he explained. “There’s a fortune there, and he wanted me to see that they went to you. It’s a queer place here to deliver them, and a strange----” He stopped, for she was not looking at the emeralds; thinking of her father, she had begun to weep. “There was no letter from my uncle?” she said after a while. “No; he was too weak to write. He sent his love and the emeralds. He was looking for gold, you know. Well, his pick broke through into a cave, and opened up a queer place that must once have been an Indian temple, or medicine lodge. The emeralds had been round the neck of a stone idol. The buckskin string that had held them was decayed, so that they had fallen to the floor, and were covered with dust. He found one, and then, by a search, got all of them.