CHAPTER XIV.
THE RESCUE.
Gabriel Armstrong leaped, rather than clambered, through the gap in the wall, and, following the track of devastation through the trees, scrambled down the steep slope that led toward the Hudson.
The forest looked as though a car of Juggernaut had passed that way.
Limbs and saplings lay in confusion, larger trees showed long wounds upon their bark, and here and there pieces of metal--a gray mud-guard, a car door, a wind-shield frame, with shattered plate glass still clinging to it--lay scattered on the precipitous declivity.

Beside these, hanging to a branch, Gabriel saw a gaily-striped auto robe; and, further down, a heavy, fringed shawl.
Again he shouted, holding to a tree-trunk at the very edge of a cliff of limestone, and peering far down into the abyss where the car had taken its final plunge.

Still no answer.

But, from below, the heavy smoke still rose.

And now, peering more keenly, Armstrong caught sight of the wreck itself.
"There it is, and burning like the pit of Hell!" he exclaimed.
"And--what's that, under it?
A man ?" He could not distinctly make out, so thick the foliage was.