214 THE STRAWBERRY PARTY. 



Alice was beside me, she grasped my arm and her face grew 

 deadly pale, but she did not speak. Slowly and cautiously 

 fixing his feet in the patches of herbage, or projecting stones 

 on the rugged sides of the chasm, Lionel descended. The rock 

 sloped inwards, and at one moment, he was literally hanging, 

 face upward, from the frightful precipice. As he approached 

 the ledge upon which lay the helpless boy, the descent became 

 still more difficult, until at length he reached a point from whence 

 a perpendicular wall of stone went sheer down some fifteen feet, 

 terminating on the table of rock where Charlie had been caught 

 in his fall. For a moment Lionel paused, and looked upward, 

 then seizing the tough branches of a wild grape-vine, which 

 wound itself among the stones and trees above his head, he 

 swung himself loose, and guarding himself with one hand from 

 being dashed against the rock, he slid down, until with one bold 

 leap he placed himself beside the unconscious boy. 



" He lives ! he breathes ! was the joyful exclamation that 

 burst from the lips of the courageous climber as he placed his 

 hand upon the extended body. The boy moved feebly as he 

 spoke, and on the instant, we saw Lionel unwind the shawl 

 from his own body, and bind it firmly around Charlie ; then 

 passing the ends around the trunk of a stunted tree which push- 

 ed itself forward between the masses of stone, he secured him 

 from any further danger until help should arrive. To this 

 forethought Charlie owed his life, for no sooner did he begin to 

 revive than his convulsive struggles would certainly have pre- 

 cipitated him from the rock had he not been thus guarded. 



