The sun sank redly. Lingering long upon the ledge before their cabin, it at last slipped away almost imperceptibly, leaving Rand still wrapped in revery. Darkness, the smoke of distant fires in the woods, and the faint evening incense of the pines, crept slowly up; but Ruth came not. The moon rose, a silver gleam on the farther ridge; and Rand, becoming uneasy at his brother's prolonged absence, resolved to break another custom, and leave the summit, to seek him on the trail. He buckled on his revolvers, seized his gun, when a cry from the depths arrested him. He leaned over the ledge, and listened. Again the cry arose, and this time more distinctly. He held his breath: the blood settled around his heart in superstitious terror. It was the wailing voice of a woman. “Ruth, Ruth! for God's sake come and help me!” The blood flew back hotly to Rand's cheek. It was Mornie's voice. By leaning over the ledge, he could distinguish something moving along the almost precipitous face of the cliff, where an abandoned trail, long since broken off and disrupted by the fall of a portion of the ledge, stopped abruptly a hundred feet below him. Rand knew the trail, a dangerous one always: in its present condition a single mis-step would be fatal. Would she make that mis-step? He shook off a horrible temptation that seemed to be sealing his lips, and paralyzing his limbs, and almost screamed to her, “Drop on your face, hang on to the chaparral, and don't move!” In another instant, with a coil of rope around his arm, he was dashing down the almost perpendicular “slide.” When he had nearly reached the level of the abandoned trail, he fastened one end of the rope to a jutting splinter of granite, and began to “lay out,” and work his way laterally along the face of the mountain. Presently he struck the regular trail at the point from which the woman must have diverged. “It is Rand,” she said, without lifting her head. “It is,” replied Rand coldly. “Pass the rope under your arms, and I'll get you back to the trail.” “Where is Ruth?” she demanded again, without moving. She was trembling, but with excitement rather than fear. “I don't know,” returned Rand impatiently. “Come! the ledge is already crumbling beneath our feet.” “Let it crumble!” said the woman passionately. Rand surveyed her with profound disgust, then passed the rope around her waist, and half lifted, half swung her from her feet. In a few moments she began to mechanically help herself, and permitted him to guide her to a place of safety. That reached, she sank down again. The rising moon shone full upon her face and figure. Through his growing indignation Rand was still impressed and even startled with the change the few last months had wrought upon her. In place of the silly, fanciful, half-hysterical hoyden whom he had known, a matured woman, strong in passionate self-will, fascinating in a kind of wild, savage beauty, looked up at him as if to read his very soul.