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260 Only the assurance of Barcus that Judith had somehow escaped being precipitated over the eaves of the shale roof gave him nerve enough to resume the climb. It was true, she lay within three yards of the brink, unstirring. She dared not stir—a single movement would set the shale bed again in motion.

Alan understood that, as Barcus asserted, she had deliberately cut the rope herself—and offered up her life to spare his own. …

A broad roadway ran along the top of the precipice, turning off, at a little distance to the right, to descend the mountainside. And just beyond this turning Providence had chosen to locate the camp of an hydraulic mining outfit.

Alan's appearance at the top, in fact, was coincident with the arrival at the point of half a dozen excited miners; and he had no more than voiced his demands than three of their number were hastening to procure rope and more hands. Within five minutes Alan was being lowered over the edge and down to the shale roof, on which he landed at a spot far to one side of Judith, to escape all danger of sending a second landslide down upon her.

Picking his way carefully, Alan edged along the brink, more than once saved from falling by the rope, until he stood immediately below Judith. There pausing, he tossed the end of the rope into her hands, and when she had wound it twice around her arms,