Hervey could only follow, his heart beating, his nerves tingling with excitement.

What happened, seemed all in an instant.

It was over almost before it began.

Tom had emerged into a little clearing where there was a spring and the next thing Hervey knew, there was his companion stuffing a handkerchief into the mouth of a little fellow in a red sweater and lifting the little form into his arms.
Hervey saw the clearing, the spring, the handkerchief stuffed into the child's mouth, the little legs dangling as Tom carried the struggling form--he saw these things as in a kind of vision.

The next thing he noticed (and that was when they had descended forty or fifty yards below the spring) was that the child's sweater was frayed near the shoulder.
Down the steep declivity Tom moved, over rocks, now crawling, now letting himself down, now handing himself by one hand from tree to tree, agilely, carefully, surely.