upon the grassy ledge
of England that overlooks the Channel. Evan said suddenly: "Will they
let me see her in heaven once in a thousand ages?" and addressed the
remark to the editor of _The Atheist_, as on which he would be likely or
qualified to answer. But no answer came; a silence sank between the two.

Turnbull strode sturdily to the edge of the cliff and looked out, his
companion following, somewhat more shaken by his recent agitation.

"If that's the view you take," said Turnbull, "and I don't say you are
wrong, I think I know where we shall be best off for the business. As it
happens, I know this part of the south coast pretty well. And unless I
am mistaken there's a way down the cliff just here which will land us on
a stretch of firm sand where no one is likely to follow us."

The Highlander made a gesture of assent and came also almost to the edge
of the precipice. The sunrise, which was broadening over sea and shore,
was one of those rare and splendid ones in which there seems to be no
mist or doubt, and nothing but a universal clarification more and more
complete. All the colours were transparent. It seemed like a triumphant
prophecy of some perfect world where everything being innocent will be
intelligible; a world where even our bodies, so to speak, may be as of
burning glass. Such a world is faintly though fiercely figured in the
coloured windows of Christian architecture. The sea that lay before
them was like a pavement of emerald, bright and almost brittle; the
sky against which its strict horizon hung was almost absolutely white,
except that close to the sky line, like scarlet braids on the hem of a
garment, lay strings of flaky cloud of so gleaming and gorgeous a red
that they seemed cut out of some strange blood-red celestial metal, of
which the mere gold of this earth is but a drab yellow imitation.

"The hand of Heaven is still pointing," muttered the man of superstition
to himself. "And now it is a blood-red hand."

The cool voice of his companion cut in upon his monologue, calling to
him from a little farther along the cliff, to tell him that he had found
the ladder of descent. It began as a steep and somewhat greasy path,
which then tumbled down twenty or thirty feet in the form of a fall of
rough stone steps. After that, there was a rather awkward drop on to
a ledge of stone and then the journey was undertaken easily and even
elegantly by the remains of an ornamental staircase, such as might