"Now--now comes the 'scratch'!" he shouted laughingly. "I'm going to hook on to that 'nick' in the rock, there, just over my head, and draw myself up. Had to 'shy' it coming down--for fear it would catch in my clothing." "Didn't I--didn't I t-tell you it was him?" burst forth Pem, with all the vehemence of a little spring torrent, in Una's ear as she caught the ring of the chaffing voice which had railed at the Fates for "wishing a wreck on" to unoffending youth, and was so boldly challenging them now. And just as free and frank in her girlish gratitude as that torrent bubbling impulsively out of the earth, when the nickum reached the crest again, she sprang forward, hand outstretched, to meet him. Her eyes, blue as the little fairy blossoms of the star-grass now, were breeze blown in the meadow of her gladness. It was nothing--nothing not to know the name of one who had saved you from death, she thought. By the rescue you knew him! And he knew her! Those eyes, those keen, girlish eyes which had looked through the spectroscope a hundred times, in her father's laboratory, into the remote mystery of that far-away upper air could not be deceived. By the sudden, startled heave of his shoulders, whose defiant shrug she remembered so well, by the quick intake of breath, as its climbing hiss sharpened to a whistle--almost a rude whistle in the excitement of the feat he had just performed--by the little stare of breathless surprise, of quandary, in his dark eyes, glowing like Una's, he recognized her ... and passed her by. Recognized her as the girl whose "pep" he had complimented for putting another's life before her own--and didn't want to have anything more in life to say to her! Well! the Heavens fell upon the Pinnacle as Pem drew back--annihilated. Snubbed for the first time in all her blue-sky life--and by a boy, too! To be sure, indeed, the nickum, his glance darting past her to Una, had gone by with a slight inclination of his bare head that was a stony bow. To be sure, when one of the girls of his acquaintance questioned him about the view from the Devil's Seat, there was a sort of creak in his voice as he answered: "It's--a--corker! You can see away off: far-rms, lakes, all the other mountains--Mount Greylock, too, in the distance! But--but it's a cat's-foot climb down--there!" breaking off breathlessly, as if feeling were making a cat's-paw of him. "Oh! you can really see Mount Greylock! As far away as that! Well! I'm going to try-y it, too," ventured one of his girlish companions whose age was fourteen. "Summer and winter, I've done a lot of climbing, up here!" "You try it! Any girl try sitting in the Devil's Chair! Why! there isn't a girl living who could do it," crowed the gray-shouldered youth: and now his tones were lordly, as if he were picking himself up after an inner tumble. "Hey! Is that so?" Pem--over-hearing--ground the words between her teeth.