As Ethan Tynes looked wistfully over the precipice, he started with a sudden surprise. There on the narrow ledge lay the dead turkey. The sight sharpened Ethan's regrets. He had made a good shot, and he hated to relinquish his game. While he gazed in dismayed meditation, an idea began to kindle in his brain. Why could he not let himself down to the ledge by those long, strong vines that hung over the edge of the cliff? It was risky, Ethan knew, terribly risky. But then,--if only the vines were strong! He tried them again and again with all his might, selected several of the largest, grasped them hard and fast, and then slipped lightly off the crag. He waited motionless for a moment. His movements had dislodged clods of earth and fragments of rock from the verge of the cliff, and until these had ceased to rattle about his head and shoulders he did not begin his downward journey. Now and then as he went he heard the snapping of twigs, and again a branch would break, but the vines which supported him were tough and strong to the last. Almost before he knew it, he stood upon the ledge, and with a great sigh of relief he let the vines swing loose. "Waal, that warn't sech a mighty job at last. But law, if it hed been Peter Birt 'stid of me, that thar wild tur-r-key would hev laid on this hyar ledge plumb till the Jedgmint Day!" He walked deftly along the ledge, picked up the bird, and tied it to one of the vines with a string which he took from his pocket, intending to draw it up when he should be once more on the top of the crag. These preparations complete, he began to think of going back. He caught the vines on which he had made the descent, but before he had fairly left the ledge, he felt that they were giving way. He paused, let himself slip back to a secure foothold, and tried their strength by pulling with all his force. Presently down came the whole mass in his hands. The friction against the sharp edges of the rock over which they had been stretched with a strong tension had worn them through. His first emotion was one of intense thankfulness that they had fallen while he was on the ledge instead of midway in his [v]precarious ascent. "Ef they hed kem down whilst I war a-goin' up, I'd hev been flung down ter the bottom o' the valley, 'kase this ledge air too narrer ter hev cotched me." He glanced down at the somber depths beneath. "Thar wouldn't hev been enough left of me ter pick up on a shovel!" he exclaimed, with a tardy realization of his foolish recklessness. The next moment a mortal terror seized him. What was to be his fate? To regain the top of the cliff by his own exertions was an impossibility.