The sunlight was beginning to slant through the ravine, and here and
there the racing water gleamed silvery. It was intensely refreshing to
kneel and bathe face and hands in its icy coldness. She lingered long
over it. Its sparkling purity seemed to reach and still the throbbing
misery at her heart. In some fashion it brought her peace.

She would have prayed, but she felt she had no prayer to offer. She
had no favour to ask for herself, and her world was quite empty now.
She had no one in her heart for whom to pray.

Yet for awhile she knelt dumb among the lifeless stones, her face
hidden, her thoughts with the father whose loss she had scarcely
begun to realise. It might be that God would understand and pity her
silence, she thought drearily to herself.

The rush of the water drowned all sound but its own, and the memory
of Nick, waiting above, faded from her consciousness like a dream. Her
brain felt numb and heavy still. She did not want to think. She leaned
her head against a rock, closing her eyes. The continuous babble of
the stream was like a lullaby.

Under its soothing influence she might have slept, a blessed
drowsiness was stealing over her, when suddenly there flashed through
her being a swift warning of approaching danger. Whence it came she
knew not, but its urgency was such that instinctively she started up
and looked about her.

The next instant, with a sound half-gasp, half-cry, she was on
her feet, and shrinking back against her sheltering boulder in the