criminal up there had moved to the brink of the Fall to listen; and he
dared no more.

He waited till all was still again, then crept, cat-like, along the
rock-foot, and hit, at length, the track up which a while before had
fled Killer and victim. Up that ragged way he crawled on hands and
knees. The perspiration rolled off his face; one elbow brushed the rock
perpetually; one hand plunged ever and anon into that naked emptiness on
the other side.

He prayed that the moon might keep in but a little longer; that his feet
might be saved from falling, where a slip might well mean death, certain
destruction to any chance of success. He cursed his luck that Th' Owd Un
had somehow missed him in the dark; for now he must trust to chance, his
own great strength, and his good oak stick. And as he climbed, he laid
his plan: to rush in on the Killer as he still gorged and grapple
with him. If in the darkness he missed--and in that narrow arena the
contingency was improbable--the murderer might still, in the panic of
the moment, forget the one path to safety and leap over the Fall to his
destruction.

At length he reached the summit and paused to draw breath. The
black void before him was the Scoop, and in its bosom--not ten yards
away--must be lying the Killer and the killed.

He crouched against the wet rock-face and listened. In that dark
silence, poised 'twixt heaven and earth, he seemed a million miles apart
from living soul.

No sound, and yet the murderer must be there. Ay, there was the tinkle
of a dislodged stone; and again, the tread of stealthy feet.

The Killer was moving; alarmed; was off.

Quick!

He rose to his full height; gathered himself, and leapt.

Something collided with him as he sprang; something wrestled madly with
him; something wrenched from beneath him; and in a clap he heard
the thud of a body striking ground far below, and the slithering and
splattering of some creature speeding furiously down the hill-side and
away.

"Who the blazes?" roared he.

"What the devil?" screamed a little voice.

The moon shone out.

"Moore!"

"M'Adam!"

And there they were still struggling over the body of a dead sheep.

In a second they had disengaged and rushed to the edge of the Fall. In
the quiet they could still hear the scrambling hurry of the fugitive far
below them. Nothing was to be seen, however, save an array of startled
sheep on the hill-side, mute witnesses of the murderer's escape.

The