the stains.

The course she chose was down in the hollows between the hills, till at
last she struck the one along which she had passed after leaving Ram and
his companion, and turned down here, believing that, if the boy selected
it, there would be good reason for his so doing. She walked steadily
on, finding a button mushroom here and a bunch of blackberries there.
For one minute she paused, struck by the peculiar sweet and sickly odour
of a large-leaved herb which she had crushed, and admired its
beautifully veined blossoms, in happy ignorance of the fact that it was
the deadly poisonous henbane, and then all at once she missed Grip.

"Oh, how tiresome!" she cried excitedly; and she called him loudly, but
there was no reply. A gull or two floated about and uttered their
querulous calls, otherwise the silence was profound, and, though she
swept the great curved sides of the hollow, whose end seemed filled up
by the towering hill, all soft green slope toward her, but sheer scarped
and projecting cliff toward the sea, there was not so much as a sheep in
sight.

With a great horror coming upon her, she hurried along towards the
cliff, thinking of what Dadd had said, and picturing in her mind's eye
poor Grip racing along some seaward slope in chase of a rabbit, and
going right over the cliff, she went on almost at a run, pausing,
though, to call from time to time.

It was intensely hot in that hollow, for the sea breeze was completely
shut off, but she did not pause, and rapidly neared the cliff now, her
dread increasing, as she wondered whether Ram would be good enough to
get a boat, and row along under the cliff to find the poor dog's body,
so that she might bury it up in the fir-wood behind the house, in a
particular spot close to where she had so often sat.

No sign of Grip: no sound. She called again, but there was no cheery
bark in response, and with her despondent feeling on the increase, she
began to climb the side of the hollow, passing unnoticed great clusters
of blackberries, whose roots were fast in the stones, and the fruit
looking like bunches of black grapes; past glistening white mushrooms,
better than any she had yet seen, but they did not attract her; and at
last she had climbed so high that she could see the blue waves spreading
up and up to the horizon, and about a couple of miles out the
white-sailed cutter, which was creeping slowly along the shore.

"I wonder where that midshipman is," she