g. What an easy thing to fall over there
and meet death halfway!" He muttered the words under his breath and
began slowly to climb the difficult ascent.

The sun was gone, and down by the water a cold, damp current of air
seemed to sweep around the curve of the bluff along with the rush of
the river. As he climbed he came to a warmer wave of air, and the dusk
closed softly around him, as if nature were casting a friendly curtain
over the drowsing earth; and the roar of the river came up to him, no
longer angrily, but in a ceaseless, subdued complaint.

Again he paced the top of the bluff, and at last seated himself with
his feet hanging over the edge, at the spot from which the stone had
fallen. The trees on this wind-swept place were mostly gnarled oaks,
old and strong and rugged, standing like a band of weather-beaten life
guardsmen overlooking the miles of country around. Not twenty paces
from where the young man sat, half reclining on his elbow, stood one
of these oaks, and close to its great trunk on its shadowed side a man
bent forward intently watching him. Whenever the young man shifted his
position restlessly, the figure made a darting movement forward as if
to snatch him from the dangerous brink, then recoiled and continued to
watch.

Soon the young man seemed to be aware of the presence and watchful
eye, and looked behind him, peering into the dusk. Then the man left
his place and came toward him, with slow, sauntering step.

"Hullo!" he said, with an insinuating, rising inflection and in the
soft voice of the Scandinavian.

"Hallo!" replied the young man.

"Seek?"

"Sick? No." The young man laughed slightly. "What are you doing
here?"

"Oh, I yust make it leetle valk up here."

"Same with me, and now I'll make it a little walk back to town." The
young man rose and stretched himself and turned his steps slowly back
along the winding path.

"Vell, I tank I make it leetle valk down town, too," and the figure
came sauntering along at the young man's side.

"Oh, you're going my way, are you? All right."

"Yas, I tank I going yust de sam your way."

The young man set the pace more rapidly, and for a time they walked on
in silence. At last, "Live here?" he asked.

"Yas, I lif here."

"Been here long?"

"In America? Yes. I guess five--sax--year. Oh, I lak it goot."

"I mean here, in this place."

"Oh, here? Yas, two, t'ree year. I lak it goot too."

"Know any one here?"

"Oh, yas. I know