Jinnie drew the reluctant, trembling child to his feet and permitted him to feel around the window-sash; she also held him tightly while he measured the stone ledge with his fingers.
Jinnie feared he was going to have another fainting spell. To ward it off, she said firmly:
"Bobbie, you want to see Lafe, don't you?"
"Then don't hold your breath." She saw him stagger, and grasping him, cried out "Breathe, Bobbie, breathe! We're going to Peggy."
Bobbie began to breathe naturally, and a beatific smile touched the corners of his lips.
"I got so many stars to-day, Jinnie," he quavered, "one slipped right down my throat."
"But you mustn't be scared again, Bobbie! If we stay, the black man'll come back and shake you again and take us to some place that'll make us both sick. You just keep on praying, and I will, too.... Now, then, I'm going out, and when I say, 'Ready,' you crawl after me."
"What's that noise?" shivered Bobbie, clutching Happy Pete.
"It's water," answered Jinnie, "water in the gorge."
Bobbie's teeth chattered. "Do we have to jump in it?"
With that she crawled through the hole, and when once on the stone ledge, she put her hand in on the boy's head.
"Lift up your leg and hang tight to Petey," she shuddered, and the blind boy did as he was bidden, and Jinnie pulled him, with the dog and fiddle, through the opening. She put him on his knees in front of her with her arms tightly about him.
"Jinnie, Jinnie!" moaned Bobbie. "My heart's jumpin' out of my mouth!"
Jinnie pressed her teeth together with all her might and main, shivering so in terror that she almost lost the strength of her arms.
"Don't think about your heart," she implored, "and don't shake so! Just think that you're going to Lafe and Peg."
Then they began their long, perilous journey to the corner of the building. It must have taken twenty minutes. Jinnie had no means by which to mark the time. She only knew how difficult it was to keep the blind child moving, with the water below bellowing its stormy way down the rock-hill to the lake. Happy Pete gave a weird little cry now and then. But on and on they went, and at the corner Jinnie spoke:
"Bobbie, we've got to turn here. Let your body go just as I shove it."
Limp was no word for Bobbie's body. He was dreadfully tired. His heart thumped under Jinnie's arms like a battering-ram.