he crept up the slope again and ran to | slender line which saved him from the ropes. "But can I hold companion. making in stern reality that dreadful began his plunge of two hundred feet from crag to crag into the sea below. However, for one with Simon's training it was not a very difficult matter to swing himself in again, and he landed on the ledge with a rebound. But the scare took hold of him, and when he had crept into his dark crevice he was glad enough to find himself out of sight for a while of the terrible wall and the pale sea. Not until he had enjoyed the spectacle of John Bower's pale and awestruck face, which he saw distinctly as it swung in mid-air before the mouth of his crevice, did he quite recover his spirits. He found it then really hard "Never mind buts!" cried John as he bent a loop on the broken end. "It's no time for buts; manage as best thou can!" With that he slipped his thigh into the noose and with the hand-line in his grasp went over the edge, while the other man held on for the life of both of them. Once and again he swayed as though the running rope must drag him headlong down, but almost instantly the pressure was relieved, and he knew that John had reached the ledges. Auxiously he waited, and by and by the signal for hoisting came and he bent every nerve and muscle to his task. But there was work to stifle his mirth, until it struck no double load on the rope. Slowly him what a terrible business there and slowly the slack gathered, until at would be if John should discover him, length John's grave, weather-beaten and that kept him very still until the face appeared above the edge. danger was past. After that he gave "There's nought to be seen down himself up to a complete enjoyment of there," he said, "nought at all. You the situation. This splendid plot had be off as sharp as ever you can to South occurred to him quite suddenly as he Bay and get 'em to bring a boat; had descended. It was really a most quick! tide's coming up fast! And I excellent way of getting even with must go and tell his poor mother and them for sending him, and he would father." have the laugh of them all. He had discovered that, though Fourscore was such an awkward place to get into from above, when once landed you could travel with ease for quite a long distance along the ledges, and that in one direction rising steadily step by step, you might even reach a little notch up which it was comparatively easy to scramble to the top of the cliff. He had kept this piece of information to himself, pleased to think how in some respects, at any rate, he was ever so much wiser than the generality of folk; and now he meant to make use of it. When he had given John and the rest of them fright enough, he would scramble up and saunter off home as though nothing had happened. And he would not tell them how he had managed it either. So they hurried away each on his sad errand, while the young man whose mangled corpse they believed lay under the plashing waters below, crouched safely in a deep crevice half-way down the steep, and chuckled with the delight of a born humorist at the magnificent success of his little joke. It had so nearly been a failure too, for after he had carefully hammered out the substance of the rope across a sharp rock, leaving just one strand unbroken which he was sure would give way with the slightest strain and so complete the illusion, he had given the signal to the men above, and found too late that he had miscalculated the strength of that good hemp fibre. He felt himself being slowly dragged from the ledge, and had just time to grasp the hand-line at the instant that he was launched away into the air; and when, a moment later, the strand yielded, it was only his hold upon that Such was Simon's pretty scheme, but somehow things did not turn out quite as he expected. In the first place, that sideway climb along the ward. Then it began to dawn upon him that perhaps this wasn't going to be such a splendid joke after all. He sat up and began to ponder in his slow way how it was going to end, and somehow became very uncomfortable. It was very lonesome there. The sea-birds on the ledges all round him cluttered and laughed and barked after their own peculiar fashion, and it struck him that ledges, now that he was compelled to | had grown fainter and fainter, and the make it, was by no means so simple boat had moved slowly off to southas he had reckoned upon. When he crept out everything seemed so lonely and still, in spite of the noise of the birds and the wash of the sea below, that it troubled him, and he started violently at such simple and usual things as the whirring of a scout's wings close above his head. Then he discovered that the very ledges, along which ordinarily he would have passed as easily as upon a roadside pathway, were bristling now with difficulties, they knew his plight and were mocking and when he thought of the far more him. The woe of his mother still rang dangerous places ahead of him he actu- in his tingling ears. How could he go ally shuddered. Clearly until he felt home and tell them that he had fooled steadier it was no use attempting to them? Never, never now dare he do tackle them. So finding another that! But what should he tell them cranny wherein he could stretch his then? Ay, that was going to be a very length he lay himself down fairly tired, knotty point! The thought of having and fell fast asleep. to face John Bower's cross-examination with anything less than the truth was positively terrible; he dursen't risk it ! Yet to tell the truth was impossible. The more he pondered over it the greater became his perplexity, until he burst into a sweat of remorse and shame. And by and by the birds ceased their cries, all except a single one here and there whose chuckle came strangely to the ear like a nightmare, and the long twilight faded gently, and faint stars twinkled in and out over the sea, and yet his puzzle was not solved. The night brought a feeling akin to relief to him; since now at any rate he must have a few hours respite, for it would be sheer madness to attempt to scale that cliff in the dark. In silent dejection the lad shrank back within his shelter to wait for the morning. The pale flush in the western sky crept round to the north, where he could see it over the sea; and then very slowly moved eastward, gradually gathering strength as it came, until at length under his weary eyes the rocks below lost their blackness and began to look cold and grey in the moist light of dawn, and the crags above him, which all night had pushed out mocking faces whenever he had ventured to look up at them, drew themselves together, stern and decorous, ignoring their mid He did not know how long he had slept when he was awakened from unquiet dreams by the dip of oars and faint sounds rising tremulously from the sea. He heard a sobbing voice and knew that it was his mother's. "My poor bairn! My poor bairn!" it constantly repeated, and then there came the deep, broken tones of his father trying to comfort her. "Is this the spot?" asked a strange voice. "Ay! this is where it happened, just to the left of yon green patch," replied another, which he recognized as John Bower's; and then his mother's pitiful refrain broke in again, "My poor bairn!" It turned Simon cold to hear it. From his cranny he could not see the boat, but evidently it came as close in as the swell on the rocks would permit. Every sound from it swam up to him, thin, yet very distinct. "Poor lad!" he heard the boatman say. "The sea's gettin' what was left of him; it would carry him south'ard wi' this tide. I fear no mair'll be seen on him." And then the sobs and the wail of his mother rose up again, and this time no one tried to soothe her. Simon lay dazed and shivering, not quite realizing it all, and before he was fairly conscious of his position the sounds night antics. Then the guillemots and razor-bills began to wing their labored flight straight out to sea, and their yelping and chuckling began again. A broad-winged gull passed slowly by, as if but half awake, and then a silent, thievish jackdaw. Simon arose now and stretched his cramped limbs. He was aware of keen hunger and be thought himself of the egg-satchels still hanging across his shoulders. He had placed a few eggs in them almost mechanically in passing along the ledges, and a couple of these he broke and swallowed and felt his courage revive. The bags he flung away from him, and they fluttered out and fell into the sea. Then he crept forward, setting his fingers hard in the crevices, and rose thus steadily ledge by ledge, till the last perilous step was achieved and he reached the dewy slope at the summit. Once in safety his heart gave way, he flung himself face downward into the dank herbage and burst out in a paroxysm of grief. "What shall I do?" moaned this wretched humorist. "What ever shall I do? I never dare go home again! I daren't, I daren't ! " Thus he lay while the daylight brightened, and presently across the rippling water glinted the dull bronze disk of the sun. Then he knew that the village would soon be astir, and that he must remain there no longer if he would avoid discovery. So he rose and shrank off inland under cover of the hedgerows, fetching long circuits to shun the farmsteads; and before the teams were fairly at work on the land he had put several miles between himself and his folk, and still plodded aimlessly forward along the green byways. II. FOR a time the agitation in Cregby over the loss of Simon Cowlthead was great. Souls came into being and souls departed there, as elsewhere, often enough; but generally they came and went so quietly that the joy or trouble of it scarcely spread from one end of the village to the other. But this was an affair of a very different order. The event was actually chronicled in the great county paper in a paragraph all by itself, with a great head-line thus: TERRIBLE DEATH OF A CLIFF-CLIMBER AT CREGBY a thing well calculated to make the Cregby people proud of themselves, for even their greatest stack fire, years ago, when three of Farmer Runch's horses were burned besides several pigs, had been brought before the world only in a scrap a few lines long packed away in a column of local items. Therefore they passed the paper from hand to hand, and studied and criticised every line of the paragraph, greatly gratified to find themselves all at once so famous. And every night in the little kitchen of the Grey Horse, though John Bower drank his beer in gloomy silence, the other man gave to the assembled company every incident of that eventful afternoon, and repeated it for the benefit of every new-comer. It seemed as though the village had at last got a topic of conversation other than the state of stock and crops. Then it was whispered among the women that Simon's ghost had been seen near the place where he was lost. The men heard of it from their wives, and said nothing, but avoided after nightfall the fields which lay above Fourscore. But this could not last forever. In time the matter grew stale, and even among his immediate kin, where there was real grief for Simon, the cares. which each day brought gradually settled down upon his memory and dimmed it. For a week or two the poor mother sat down to have "a real good cry" whenever she could find time, but with her family of six to look to, and turnip-hoeing, and then harvest coming on so quickly, it was but little chance she had, poor soul, until after she got to bed at nights; and even then she had to cry very quietly for fear of waking her goodman, who needed all his rest badly enough after his day's work. He, too, used at first, as he bent to his hoe, often to have to sniff and pause, and under pretence of straightening his cramped limbs draw the palm of his rough hand across his face. And there was a servant-lass at a neighboring farmstead whose tears sometimes fell into her milk-pail as she leaned her head against the ribs of the unconcerned and careless kine. While the rope hung idle the two men lit their pipes; but they had scarcely tasted the tobacco before the hand-line struck sharply. "Hup!" cried John casting away his pipe and beginning to haul steadily. After a moment's work he took alarm. mut's amiss," he said; "he's in such a hurry; I dreads summut's frightened him. What ever makes him hang so strange and lumpy? Hup, Jacob! Hup quick! 66 Sum ready to descend,—a fine, strong, goodnatured lad, who was better liked by the villagers than poor Simon had ever been. John had repeated this warning so often at this place that it had lost all meaning to the others; but the old But as soon as the news and the man had never forgotten the shock of grief had lost their freshness, there that terrible day so many years ago. It was, so far as Cregby was concerned, was this which made him doubly sensian end to the matter; and except tive at Fourscore to every tremor of when the story of the great accident the line. "What a stroke the lad has, was revived to impress some chance to be sure!" he muttered now as the visitor with the importance of the rope ran rapidly through his hands. place, Simon was forgotten. A better" Give him a bit of straight cliff an' man filled his post, though not a better he'll all but flee! Now for the slack climber; and every season the birds spot, steady there, Jacob! There, came to the cliffs to lay their eggs, and that's all right! He's on the big sheif the men went down to gather them now, an' he's cast off to walk to the just as before. For the first few years other end." the Cowlthead gang avoided Fourscore, but after a time even this feeling died out, and they climbed it again in its order as a matter of course. Threeand-twenty years passed thus. The accident had become almost a legend, but John Bower (Old John every one called him now) was still head-man of the Cowlthead gang. After a long lapse the gang once more rejoiced in the presence of one of the traditional name, for young Stephen Cowlthead, who was born the year after his brother Simon was lost, had come to the cliffs. The men noticed that their luck improved from the day of his coming, and firmly believed that it was the power of the old name. Probably a truer reason might have been found under Old John's oft-repeated declaration that "a better climber than Stephen had never climbed, always barring his poor brother Simon." By this time Cowlthead the father had been gathered to his fathers, and the mother, old and feeble, had found shelter with one of her married daughters and nursed the swarming bairns of another generation. Thus things stood in Cregby when it happened upon a certain day that the Cowlthead gang had once more fixed their ropes to climb Fourscore. Faster and faster they swayed to the rope. Speedily a hat, and with the next stroke a head and shoulders rose above the edge. "What the divil "exclaimed John, and then words failed him and he stood stock still, though yet holding tight upon the cable. For it was a brown and bearded face that grinned at him, a face altogether strange to him. Without a sound this apparition drew itself forward by the hand-line unaided, and came nimbly up the slope. It stood before them on the sod in the shape of a stalwart, middle-aged man, clothed in dark attire of excellent quality, albeit of rather outlandish cut, with a broad gold ring on the little finger, and a heavy gold chain depending from the watch-pocket; altogether a figure in striking contrast with the coarse work"Now, watch the rope well across day aspect of the cliff-climbers. The that sharp edge just above the big apparition gazed down with sardonic crack," said John, as Stephen stood enjoyment upon the helpless amaze said, "Now let's hear what you have to say, and mind an' tell us no lies." Thus admonished, the uncomfortable apparition began his history, stammering very much over the earlier part of ment of the terrified men. But a moment later John Bower had recovered his wits, sprung upon the stranger, and fettered him securely with two or three sudden coils of the loose rope. Then grasping the still grinning fig-it, John Bower watching him meanure firmly by the arms the old man forced it backward to the very edge of the descent. "Whether thou's the divil, or whoever thou is," he shouted fiercely, "if thou's done aught amiss to that lad down there, over thou goes. Speak out, afore I counts ten, or I chucks thee down! One, two, three, four while with severe and contemptuous eye, and the other two with openmouthed astonishment. He glossed as best he could over the story of the broken rope, pretending that the breakage was really accidental, and that afterwards while waiting he unintentionally fell asleep. No one made any comment upon this, but the speaker read from old John's face that one at least of his listeners refused to accept this lame tale and guessed the truth. Then he told truly enough how, after his night in the cliffs, he had found himself too much ashamed to show his nor ghost wi’ me!" he said face at home, and had made off to a sternly. "Is the lad safe? If not large seaport, where he got work as a " and he almost shook the startled joker from his perilous foothold. Whereupon the stranger ceased to grin, and spoke. "It's all right, John Bower," he said. "I'm Simon Cowlthead come up again." But old John was not satisfied and did not relax his grip. "Play neither divil "Let me go, John! The lad's all right enough. I only borrowed his ropes. Hark! He's shouting now to know what's become of 'em." The truth of this statement was borne out by the sound of a faint hallo from below. "Come here, Jacob, and hold this chap fast while I gets the lad up," was old John's mandate as he handed over his prisoner to his companion. "We'll larn more about this after that." The trembling Jacob most unwillingly obeyed, only half reassured even when he felt warm, substantial flesh in his grasp, instead of anything clammy or ghost-like. John deftly sent down the rope and set it swinging, and in a moment he felt that it had been grasped by a familiar hand below. His countenance upon this denoted his feeling of immense relief; but nevertheless it was not without some anxiety that he watched the edge of the cliff, as a fisherman might watch the water who has just landed one uncanny monster and is afraid that he may have hooked another. But it was 66 Stephen lad" who came up, and no other; and then the old man turned to their captive and carter, but couldn't settle there at all, "But how came you to be down Fowerscore?" demanded John, at the end of this recital. "Well, you see," explained the wanderer awkwardly, "I felt rather shy even yet about coming back to Cregby, so I've been stopping for a few days at Braston yonder, where an odd stranger more or less isn't noticed; and I walked up here this morning to have a |