The "basket" was slung and ready. The gang on the other side were gesticulating, with random tugs at the line. There was something whimsical in the way the proposers of the project shrank the one behind the other, with assumed bravado and covert glances at each other's faces.
"I shall have to go myself!" Villate exclaimed, with his characteristic French oath, "I will go myself, fat as I am!" when, rather bashfully, as if afraid of giving offense, young Lotte said he would go "if no better man wanted the job." There were at first muttered "_non, nons_" of dissuasion in the crowd, but nobody claimed the "job," and Villate was but too glad to get a man to go. In a moment the young man had stripped to his shirt and red drawers, taken his axe and stepped to the basket, but it was found to be insecurely attached; and afterward several better modes of handling the line were suggested, in all causing a delay of an hour or two.
And now, as if the birds of spring, just flitting past, had carried the word, or some presentiment of evil had found its way to the Peevy's mother, she inopportunely made her appearance. Rad Cates privately touched my elbow and nodded back, up the bank. I then saw young Moll standing partly in the cover of a shrub fir, a hundred yards off, intently watching the gang and the extended warp.
Several of the men saw her, but did not look or notice her after the first glance. "Parbleu! a pity she's here!" one said, and they closed in about Lotte to prevent his seeing her. But the woman soon came nearer, going partly around the crowd, keeping aloof. She had a new plaid shawl, gayly colored, pinned closely about her neck, and her long, black, Indian-like curls showed beneath a beaded scarlet hood. There was an intently anxious look in her eyes; she appeared worn and tired.
"The Peevy" was much too tall a man to be shut up in the crowd. Presently he espied her, and his eye fell. After a time he casually, as it were, made his way back to her. None of us heard what was said. The most instinctively kept their eyes to themselves. The gang on the other side was staring across the chasm. Villate ripped out an oath, and I saw Lotte push the girl aside so roughly that she caught at a shrub to save herself. He walked straight to the brink of the cliff.
