Chapter XXIII - Page 2

red braids.

"I don't think it's such a very wonderful thing to walk a little,
low, board fence," she said. "I knew a girl in Marysville who
could walk the ridgepole of a roof."

"I don't believe it," said Josie flatly. "I don't believe
anybody could walk a ridgepole. YOU couldn't, anyhow."

"Couldn't I?" cried Anne rashly.

"Then I dare you to do it," said Josie defiantly. "I dare you to
climb up there and walk the ridgepole of Mr. Barry's kitchen roof."

Anne turned pale, but there was clearly only one thing to be done.
She walked toward the house, where a ladder was leaning against the
kitchen roof. All the fifth-class girls said, "Oh!" partly in
excitement, partly in dismay.

"Don't you do it, Anne," entreated Diana. "You'll fall off
and be killed. Never mind Josie Pye. It isn't fair to dare
anybody to do anything so dangerous."

"I must do it. My honor is at stake," said Anne solemnly.
"I shall walk that ridgepole, Diana, or perish in the attempt.
If I am killed you are to have my pearl bead ring."

Anne climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the
ridgepole, balanced herself uprightly on that precarious footing,
and started to walk along it, dizzily conscious that she was
uncomfortably high up in the world and that walking ridgepoles
was not a thing in which your imagination helped you out much.
Nevertheless, she managed to take several steps before the
catastrophe came. Then she swayed, lost her balance, stumbled,
staggered, and fell, sliding down over the sun-baked roof and
crashing off it through the tangle of Virginia creeper beneath--
all before the dismayed circle below could give a simultaneous,
terrified shriek.

If Anne had tumbled off the roof on the side up which she had
ascended Diana would probably have fallen heir to the pearl bead
ring then and there. Fortunately she fell on the other side,
where the roof extended down over the porch so nearly to the
ground that a fall therefrom was a much less serious thing.
Nevertheless, when Diana and the other girls had rushed frantically
around the house--except Ruby Gillis, who remained as if rooted to
the ground and went into hysterics--they found Anne lying all white
and limp among the wreck and ruin of the Virginia creeper.

"Anne, are you killed?" shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her
knees beside her friend. "Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one
word to me and tell me if you're killed."

To the immense relief of all the girls, and especially of Josie Pye,
who, in spite of lack of imagination, had been seized with horrible
visions of a future branded as the girl who was the cause of Anne Shirley's
early and tragic death, Anne sat dizzily up and answered