However, he could not go back now.
"Dinna try it, Hughie!" cried Davie to him.

"Ye'll no mak it, and ye'll come an awfu' cropper, as sure as deith." But Hughie, swaying gently back and forth, was measuring the distance of his drop.

It was not a feat so very difficult, but it called for good judgment and steady nerve.

A moment too soon or a moment too late in letting go, would mean a nasty fall of twenty feet or more upon the solid ground, and one never knew just how one would light.
"I wudna dae it, Hughie," urged Davie, anxiously.
But Hughie, swaying high in the birch, heeded not the warning, and suddenly swinging out from the slender trunk and holding by his hands, he described a parabola, and releasing the birch dropped on to the balsam top.

But balsam-trees are of uncertain fiber, and not to be relied upon, and this particular balsam, breaking off short in Hughie's hands, allowed him to go crashing through the branches to the earth.
"Man! man!" cried Davie Scotch, bending over Hughie as he lay white and still upon the ground.