Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/235

Rh "Come back, sir; for God's sake, come," suddenly cried the Sergeant. Somewhat startled, the doctor, raising his eyes carefully, beheld an ashen face peering over the cliffs upon him. The wretch was fighting the devil he had played with so long. Two men looked down on the doomed doctor—Elms as God created him, and Elms as the devil was making him. His mind was in a whirl. Here was his opportunity. The deed so long contemplated might be—must be—done. The arm of the better man, however, his very physical nature, refused to perform the treacherous act to which the devil-mind of the man prompted.

In the almost lunatic eyes of the wrestler the doctor read his own terrible peril. He must, however, retrace his steps, though few, with care. One sudden movement, and he was lost. Still he was cool. Fixing his eyes on the craven, on whose trembling hand his life hung, he steadied him with the spell of his powerful gaze. One step, now another, he felt his way back.

At the last critical point, when to round a boulder he must needs hang heavily on his friend for support, a wild, diabolical expression sprang into the face of the man he watched.

At times, so strained are man's nerves that they perceive, as by a flash of intuition, what 'no ordinary sense could reveal. Courtenay saw that he was doomed. His hour was come. With a hiss of hate or of madness, the wretch above, at the critical moment, deliberately released his hold on the cane on which hung the life of his benefactor. For one second the miserable man balanced himself, seeking to cling with one hand to the cliff, stretching out the stick with the other towards his companion, imploring with wide, despairing eyes and working features that he would snatch it again. Human Elms