"What's that noise?" shivered Bobbie, clutching Happy Pete.
"It's water," answered Jinnie, "water in the gorge."
Bobbie's teeth chattered. "Do we have to jump in it?"
"No, I'm going to take you down a rope."
With that she crawled through the hole, and when once on the stone ledge, she put her hand in on the boy's head.
"Lift up your leg and hang tight to Petey," she shuddered, and the blind boy did as he was bidden, and Jinnie pulled him, with the dog and fiddle, through the opening. She put him on his knees in front of her with her arms tightly about him.
"Jinnie, Jinnie!" moaned Bobbie. "My heart's jumpin' out of my mouth!"
Jinnie pressed her teeth together with all her might and main, shivering so in terror that she almost lost the strength of her arms.
"Don't think about your heart," she implored, "and don't shake so! Just think that you're going to Lafe and Peg."
Then they began their long, perilous journey to the corner of the building. It must have taken twenty minutes. Jinnie had no means by which to mark the time. She only knew how difficult it was to keep the blind child moving, with the water below bellowing its stormy way down the rock-hill to the lake. Happy Pete gave a weird little cry now and then. But on and on they went, and at the corner Jinnie spoke: "Bobbie, we've got to turn here. Let your body go just as I shove it."
Limp was no word for Bobbie's body. He was dreadfully tired. His heart thumped under Jinnie's arms like a battering-ram.
"Bobbie, don't breathe that way, don't!" she entreated.
"I can't help it, honey! my side hurts," he whispered. "But I'll go where you take me, Jinnie dear."
The girl turned him carefully around the sharp ledge corner, and they went on again. Her arms seemed almost paralyzed, but they clung to the child ahead, and the child ahead clung to the little dog, who hung very straight and inert in front of his body.
When they reached the south corner, Jinnie explained their next move to Bobbie in this way: "Now listen," she told him. "You get on my back with your legs under my arms, hang to me like dear life, and keep Happy Pete between us. Don't hurt him if you can help it."
They were within touch of one of the dangling ropes and far below Jinnie saw the swaying plank to which it was fastened. Once on that board, she could get to the ground.
Then she continued: "Now while I lean over, you get on my back."