Chapter VIII

A Usurper%

Gathering her short, green skirt about
her, for she wore, as on that February
day in her father's laboratory, what he
called the "nixie green", the sylvan Camp
Fire uniform, the inventor's daughter
stretched herself breast downward, upon
the flat ledge of the Pinnacle's crest.

Working her body carefully backward,
without another glance at the precipice
beneath, she slid warily over the edge,
her face to the rock, and down the dozen
feet of almost smooth, nearly perpendicular
slab, until her feet touched the stone
seat of that curved armchair, a deep
embrasure in the mountain granite.

It was not such a wildly difficult feat
then for a girl on her mettle to turn cau-*
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