"Looks like they'd finished their breakfast an' gone," Barnabas said, in a low voice; "but then, ag'in, they may be layin' a trap fur us. It ain't safe ter calkerlate when Simon Glass is around." "We'll do no good tarrying here, man," grumbled McNicol. "Yonder's the tree, and we're ready to follow." Barnabas thought of poor Lindsay and then of the horses, and suddenly flung prudence to the winds. "Forward!" he whispered, and starting quickly through the scrub he planted his feet on the fallen pine. Nathan followed with a beating heart, and the next man had just stepped out when a musket-barrel was poked from the bushes across the chasm. "Back, men," roared Barnabas. "Get to cover," and as he turned around and gained the rear bank by an agile spring, a thunderous report woke the echoes of the gorge. Nathan tried to leap also, but it was too late. He saw the flash and the puff and felt a stinging pain on the right side of his head. All grew dark before him. He tottered, lost his balance, and fell. His hands, clutching at the empty air, caught a projecting limb, and he held to it with desperate strength. As he hung dangling over the gulf, dizzy and stupefied, he heard a harsh voice above cry out: "You fired too soon, you fool. Let the rebels have it now, men. Blaze away at the bushes." A straggling discharge of musketry followed the words, and then Nathan's fingers slipped. He shot downward forty feet to the bushy top of a tree that grew slantwise from the wall of the gorge. This broke the violence of his fall, but it did not stop him. He bounded from branch to branch, and fell the remaining distance to the creek, plunging head first beneath the surface. The instinct of life was strong within the lad, and his struggles soon brought him to the surface, choking and gasping. He was too bruised and stunned to swim a fair stroke, but by feeble paddling he managed to keep his head above water. That was all he thought about in his dazed condition, and without making an attempt to reach either shore he drifted with the sluggish current for twenty yards or so. Then he saw a conical rock close ahead, rising several feet out of mid-stream, and by an effort he reached it and clasped both arms around the top. There he clung for fully five minutes, while strength returned and his mind cleared. He had not heard a sound since he fell, and he wondered if all his companions were dead. He listened in vain, looking up at the distant blue vault of the sky. The silence of death rested on wood and stream. A sharp pain suddenly recalled the fact that he had been shot, and he put one hand to his head in a fever of apprehension. His fingers were red with blood when he looked at them, but his fear was gone. The bullet had merely grazed his brow, leaving a narrow skin wound.