Even as it was, there were not a few of that line of spectators from whose eyes the vision of what might have been, failed to fade out with the moment that witnessed it. Some of them dreamed, for nights after, (or at least until another occurrence then impending dwarfed the recollection) not only of seeing the young girl sitting helpless on that perilous rock, but of beholding her arms raised to heaven in agony and the feet of her horse pawing the air, as both disappeared from sight over the precipice. Some may still dream of the event, in lonely night-hours following days of trouble and anxiety. In the new arrangements for descending the mountains, made after the recovery of Clara Vanderlyn, Horace Townsend was not quite discarded, but he could not avoid feeling that very little dependence was placed upon his escort. It was of course as a mere jest, but to the sensitive mind of the lawyer there seemed to be a dash of malicious earnest at the bottom,--that Rowan took the first occasion as he passed near him, immediately after the young girl had been removed from his arms, to give him a forcible punch in the ribs, with the accompanying remark: "Bah! I told you that you couldn't ride; but I had no idea that you could not do any better at taking care of a woman, than that!" Townsend quite forgave him that remark, jest or earnest, for he saw the new sparkle in his eye, remembered how likely he was to have had his mind a little disordered by all that sweet wealth of auburn hair lying for so many minutes on his breast, and formed his own opinions as to the result. If those opinions were favorable, well; if they were unfavorable, he was taking a world of trouble that did not belong to him; for there is always a "sweet little cherub" sitting "up aloft" to keep watch over the fortunes of such rattle-pates and dare-devils as Halstead Rowan--to supervise their getting into scrapes and out of them! But there was nothing of jest, he thought, in the air with which Clara Vanderlyn, when re-mounting her horse, replying to an earnest expression of regret that one moment of inattention on his part should have allowed her to be placed in serious peril,--very kindly denied that he had been guilty of any neglect whatever, threw the whole blame upon her horse, thanked him for the promptness with which he was coming to her relief when forestalled, but then said, looking at Rowan with a glance which came near setting that enthusiastic equestrian entirely wild: "It seems that I am a very difficult person to take care of; and if you have no objection to my having two esquires, and will allow Mr. Rowan to ride with me as well as yourself, and if _he_ is willing to do so, I think that I shall feel" (she did not say "safer", but) "a little more like keeping up my spirits."