er, and arrived the
next minute at the brink of a deep chasm, while to the left, not a
couple of hundred yards away, rose the castle-crowned Black Tor.

He shrank back the next instant, and a feeling of confusion came over
him. He could hardly understand how it was, but directly after it was
forced upon his understanding that he had been quite wrong in his
bearings; that when he began to climb, the Black Tor lay to his right
instead of his left, and that, instead of going into safety, he had been
making straight for the most dangerous place.

To go on was impossible, for the cliff beneath him was overhanging; to
go to the left was equally vain; and to descend or return was in all
probability to walk right into the arms of his pursuers.

Once more he cautiously advanced his head between the bushes to look
out, but the prospect was not encouraging. There, fifty or sixty feet
away, was the fellow cliff to that upon which he lay, split apart by
some terrible convulsion of nature; and once there he could have made
for home, but there was no way of passing the opening save by descending
right to the river's bank, and he felt pretty certain that he could not
do this without being seen.

Still it was the only course, and his choice was open to him--to lie in
hiding till the darkness came, many hours later, or boldly descend.

To lie there in the shadow with his wet clothes clinging to him was not
a pleasant prospect, but it seemed the only one feasible under the
circumstances; and he concluded that this was what he would do, wishing
the while that he dared go and lie right out in the sunshine.

He had hardly thought this, when a hot thrill ran through him, for from
somewhere below there came the sharp bark of a dog, and a voice rose
cheering the animal on, and then shouted: "Close in, all of you: he's up
here somewhere. Dog's got his scent."

Then voices answered with hails from different parts, and Ralph's next
movement was to crawl forward again to the very edge of the precipice,
look over, and seek for a place where he might perhaps descend.

But again he saw that it was utterly hopeless, and nerved now by his
despair, he began to descend through the fringe of scrub oak and beech,
close to the chasm, so as to get down to the river, where he meant to
plunge in, and cross by wading or swimming to the other side.

But there is no hiding from the scent of a dog. Ralph had not gone down
half-a-dozen yards before the