As he spoke, Kenneth divided the bushes, and held them apart for his companion to join him, and the next moment they were standing on the brink of a narrow rift in the rock, so narrow that the bush-tips met overhead, and made the water that glided silently along many feet below look quite dark.

"But that's not the whole of the water which goes over the fall," said Max wonderingly.

"Every drop. It's narrow, but it's fine and deep, and when it spouts out it falls on to the stones and spreads round so as to look big--makes the most of itself. Now then, are you tired?"

"Yes; my legs ache a bit."

"Very well, then, this is the nearest way home."

"I don't understand you."

"Jump in here, and the water would carry you right away down to the bathing-cave. Scood and I have sent strings of corks down here, and the stream has carried them right to Dunroe."

"I think I'd rather walk," said Max, smiling.

"So would I. Now come on and see where the water falls."

He led the way, and Max and Scoodrach followed, the latter, who was musically disposed that morning, taking advantage of the noise made by the falls to use it as a cloak to cover his own, with the result that every now and then Max was startled by hearing sounds close behind him remarkably suggestive of Donald Dhu being close upon their track, armed with his pipes, and doing battle with all his might.

"Here you are," cried Kenneth, brushing through the last of the hazel boughs, and standing out on the rock close to the edge of the great hollow into which the water poured; and the shrinking sensation increased, as Max joined his friend, and found that there was nothing to protect him from falling into the great gulf at whose brink they stood.

All this struck him for the moment, but the dread was swept away by the rush of thought which took its place. For there below, as he gazed down at the falling water arching from the narrow rift into a stony basin, to then rush over the sides and fall in a silvery veil, to the deep chasm fringed with delicate dew--sparkling greenery, amidst whose leaves and boughs floated upward a cloud of white mist, which kept changing, as the sun shone upon it, to green and yellow and violet and orange of many depths of tone, but all dazzlingly bright, one melting into the other and disappearing to reappear in other rainbow hues.

Far below them, toward where the rugged hollow opened out to allow of the escape of the water from the falls, Tavish and Long Shon could be seen, seated on the stones they had chosen, smoking their pipes and basking in company with the dogs, for the warm rays of a sunny day had of late been rare.

"There's a teal o' watter in the fa's," said Scoodrach gravely.

"Of course there is, stupid, after this rain," cried Kenneth. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Couldn't tell her nothing she don't know," cried Scoodrach. "She reats books, and goes to school, and learns efferything."

"That's just what the masters say I don't do, Scoody. Here, let's go down to the basin."

"What! get down there?" cried Max in horror, as Kenneth seated himself on the edge of the stony channel through which the water came down from the mountain before making its leap.

"Yes; it's easy enough," cried Kenneth, dangling his legs to and fro, and making them brush through the fronds of a beautiful fern growing in a crevice. "Scoody and I have often been down."

"But she shall not go pelow now," said the young gillie, looking down at the smooth, gla.s.sy current. "There's chust too much watter in ta way."

"Get out!" cried Kenneth. "Look here, Max: you can get down here to the edge of the water, and follow it to where it makes its first leap, and then get under it to the other side, and clamber on to the edge of the basin where it spreads, and look down. It's glorious. Come on."

"Na, she will not come," cried Scoodrach. "There's too much watter."

"You're a worse coward than Max."

"Nay, she shall na go," cried Scoodrach, making a bound to the spot where Kenneth was seated; but quick as thought the lad twisted round, let himself glide down, and, as the young gillie made a dash at his hands, they slid over the moss and gra.s.s and were gone.

Kenneth's merry laugh came up out of the narrow rift, sounding m.u.f.fled and strange, and the two lads looked down to where he was creeping along, some fifteen feet below them, in the half-darkness of the hollow, and holding on by the pendent roots which issued from the crevices, as he picked his way along the stones, with the water often washing against his feet.

"Come down, Max. Don't be a coward," he cried, as he looked up over his shoulder at the two anxious faces, while the hiss, rush, and roar of the water nearly covered with sound his half-heard voice.

"She's coing to troon herself, ye ken!" cried Scoodrach, stamping his foot with rage. "Come pack, Maister Ken! Do she hear me? Come pack!"

Kenneth probably did not hear the words, but he looked up again and laughed, as he stood near the end of the narrow gully, with the sunny light of the great hollow behind him showing up his form, and at the same time his face was lit up strangely by the weird gleam of a reflection from the rushing, gla.s.sy, peat-stained stream as it glided on to the mouth of the gully for its leap.

"She canna stay here and see her young maister troon herself," cried Scoodrach wildly. "She must go town and ket trooned too."

"Coming, Scoody?" cried Kenneth, as he half turned round where he stood on a little block of stone, against which the water surged.

Scoodrach was in the act of seating himself upon the edge previous to lowering himself down, and, why he knew not, he hesitated and spoke, half to Max, half to himself.

"She'll go and trag her pack! she'll go and trag her pack!" Then he uttered a hoa.r.s.e cry, for, as they saw Kenneth, framed in as it were by the narrow rock, gazing back at them, while the swift gleaming water swept by his legs, they suddenly noted that he started and made a clutch at an overhanging root which came away in his hands, while the stone upon which he was standing tottered over and disappeared in the rushing water.

But Kenneth was active as a monkey; and, failing in his first attempt to grasp something to support him, he made a second leap and caught at a hazel bough which grew out horizontally above his head.

This time he was successful, and, as the st.u.r.dy bough bent and swayed, the lad hung right over the rushing water.

"Chump! Swing and chump, Maister Ken!" cried Scoodrach; and then he was silent, and sat staring wildly, for he realised that he could not help his young master--that there would not be time.

Kenneth was swinging to and fro, the bough dipping and rising and dipping, so low that the water almost touched his feet. As he hung he tried to get a better hold, and made a struggle to go hand over hand to the place where the bough joined the mossy roots.

But it was all in vain. Before he could get his loosened hand past a secondary branch, the rotten root broke away from its insecure hold in the gully wall, and one moment the two spectators saw Kenneth hanging there, his form shown up by the light behind; the next, they saw branch and its holder descend quickly into the gla.s.sy water, which was momentarily disturbed by a few leafy twigs standing above its surface, then a hand appeared, then again with half the arm, making a clutch at vacancy, and then there was nothing but the water gliding onward to the opening through which it leaped down into the basin on the top of the spreading rock.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

RIVAL DOCTORS.

For a few moments Scoodrach was as if frozen. He sat gazing at the rushing water, and then he sprang up and dashed past Max, shouting,--

"Come on! come on pefore he's trooned."

Max rushed after him, following the best way he could, for Scoodrach had disappeared among the low growth of hazel, and it was only by listening to the sound that he was able to make out the way the young gillie had gone.

The distance was only some fifty yards down, through a depression which led round to a kind of shelf just level with the top of the huge ma.s.s of rock on to which the water fell, and Max forgot the danger in the excitement, as he reached Scoodrach, who was standing holding on by the thin branch of a birch tree which had grown outward, and hung drooping over the great hollow below, and so near to the falling foam that its outer leaves were sprinkled with the spray.

As Max crept to his side, Scoodrach gave him a horrified look, and pointed at something in the bubbling water at the edge of the basin.

"What'll she do?" he cried despairingly; "if she climbs along the tree, she canna chump it. Oh, look, look! Maister Ken! Maister Ken!"

Even if it had been possible, there was no time to render help, for, as they gazed wildly at the basin into which the clear, smooth jet of water fell, they saw that the apparently inanimate body of Kenneth was borne nearer and nearer to the edge of the stone, and then slowly onward, to glide over in the spreading veil, and then disappear in the foam and mist far below.

"Pack again and doon to the bottom!" yelled Scoodrach, and he rushed by Max so fiercely that he had to clutch at and hold on by a sapling to prevent his own fall headlong into the watery hollow.

Max drew himself safely to the perpendicular wall, and crept back now along the rugged ledge, which had not impressed him with its risky nature before, and the perspiration stood out clammily on his temples as he reached the place where he had begun to descend.

He was here in a dense growth of nut and birch, and he listened vainly for the rustling made by Scoodrach as he ran down.