Perhaps he no longer feared death. There is this merit of exhaustion in danger that it blinds the imagination and leaves indifference to the ultimate issue. Gavin was just at that point when a man is incapable of further effort, even in the cause of his own safety, when, looking up, he perceived Evelyn at the balustrade, her face deathly white, her eyes shining terror; but her acts were as cool and collected as they had been when first he met her in the long gallery of Melbourne Hall. Waked from the trance of fear by the words he had spoken, she cast one quick glance at the figure swaying upon the rope; then turned about her and, stooping, she picked up the long rope which her own maladroitness had displaced from the battlements. Methodically and without a blunder, she made a noose in this and passed it over the parapet. "Slip your arm over it," she said, in a voice that betrayed no emotion whatever. "I will tie it to the weather-vane--please, please try. I can help you--I am very strong, Mr. Ord. Yes, that is the way--now take my hand--don't be afraid to hurt me--yes, yes, like that." He slipped one arm over the noose and changing hands cleverly upon the other rope and digging his feet deep into the rotting stone, he drew the noose around his body while she caught up the slack of the cord and bound it round and round the great iron pillar of the weather-vane which crowns the Belfry Tower of Melbourne Hall. His position was such in this instant that he hung out clear above the abyss with his face upon a level with the parapet and his body backward to the flags below. All depended upon the iron pillar of the weather-vane and the stuff of which the rope was made. Gavin had no alternative but to trust to it, and he swung himself out fearlessly with one earnest prayer for safety upon his lips. So near to him that he wondered that his arms could not touch her was the figure of Evelyn, seeming to beckon him to salvation. He felt the noose draw tight about his body, and for some instants he swung to and fro almost with the content of one who has waged a good fight and would sleep. Then her voice came welcomely to his ears once more, bidding him make an effort; and at this he pulled himself up almost with superhuman will and touched the round of the stone-work with his hands laid flat upon it and his knees bent upon the balustrade. Would he fall back once more or had she the strength to save him? Her little hands had caught him by the wrists now; and, kneeling, she exerted a strength she had never known herself to possess. Must they go crashing together to the flags shining in the sunlight below? In vain he supplicated her to release her hold and leave him to do battle for himself. "I shall pull you over," he cried madly. "For God's sake, leave me to myself!"