So I fear he may have assumed
the role of wounded sufferer when in reality he was but scared and
lonesome. He never owned this afterward, and you may be sure we
never let him know, by word or look, the evil he had done. Jimmy
saw him holding up one paw helplessly, and looking at him with
wistful, imploring brown eyes, heard his pitiful whimpering cry for
aid, and never doubted his great distress and peril. Was Dash not
a fisherman? And fishermen, in Fishin' Jimmy's category, were
always true and trusty. So the old man without a second's
hesitation started down the steep, smooth decline to the rescue of
his friend.
We do not know just how or where in that terrible descent he fell.
To us who afterward saw the spot, and thought of the weak old man,
chilled by the storm, exhausted by his exertions, and yet
clambering down that precipitous cliff, made more slippery and
treacherous by the sleet and hail still falling, it seemed
impossible that he could have kept a foothold for an instant.
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