You know how truly I am interested in all that relates to you,--that I regard you with an affection which-- HELP! HELP! HELP! A cry as of a young person's voice was heard faintly, coming from the direction of the river.

Something in the tone of it struck to his heart, and he sprang as if he had been stabbed.

He flung open his chamber window and leaped from it to the ground.

He ran straight to the bank of the river by the side of which the village of Alderbank was built, a little farther down the stream than the house in which he was living.
Everybody that travels in that region knows the beautiful falls which break the course of the river just above the village; narrow and swift, and surrounded by rocks of such picturesque forms that they are sought and admired by tourists.

The stream was now swollen, and rushed in a deep and rapid current over the ledges, through the rocky straits, plunging at last in tumult and foam, with loud, continuous roar, into the depths below the cliff from which it tumbled.
A short distance above the fall there projected from the water a rock which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, hoarded a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support a decent vegetable existence.