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aloft there--I will make the painter fast to this sapling so that you
may not go adrift--I will secure my prize."

"But will it not be dangerous for you to climb up there?" protested
Sibylla apprehensively.

"If I find it so I will not persevere in my attempt," answered Ned
laughingly, as he grasped a bough and swung himself up on to a
projecting ledge of rock.

For a few yards of the ascent Ned's figure was clearly visible; then, as
he ascended still higher, Sibylla caught sight of him only at intervals,
and soon afterwards he vanished altogether among the greenery, though
his upward progress could still be traced here and there by the swaying
of the bushes, but at length this also ceased, and then a dreadful
silence and feeling of lonesomeness seemed to enwrap the fair girl as in
the folds of a sable mantle. Minute followed minute with painful
slowness as it seemed to Sibylla, and _every_ instant she expected to
see Ned's outstretched arm appear from the midst of the shrubs clinging
aloft there to grasp the body of the bird. But nothing of the sort
occurred, and at length, after a long and tedious period of painful
apprehension, she ventured to call his name.

No answer.

Sibylla waited a minute or two, and then called again.

Still no answer.

She now became very seriously alarmed, and, quite losing command of
herself, called upon him in piteous accents to answer, or if anything
had befallen him to give her some sign of his whereabouts in order that
she might be guided to his assistance. Still calling him, she was about
to attempt the perilous ascent of the cliff-face in quest of him when
she heard him shout, and, looking up, saw him leaning over the edge of a
rocky ledge about a hundred feet above her.

"Are you all right, Miss Stanhope?" he shouted. "I thought I heard you
call."

"Yes," she replied, steadying her voice as well as she could on the
instant. "I am all right, thank you, but I _have_ been calling; you
were so long away that I began to fear some accident had befallen you."

"No," he answered back, "I am all right, but I have made a most
wonderful and interesting discovery that--However, I will come down."

And suiting the action to the word, he at once began to descend the face
of the cliff, not vertically, as he had gone up, but in a diagonal
direction, and, as Sibylla thought, at break-neck speed. Ned continued
his wild career until he reached the water's-edge, at a distance of
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