l side-door, reached the slope of the
cliff upon which the old castle was built, and then by a narrow pathway,
clambered a couple of hundred feet higher, starting the jackdaws from
their resting-places, making them fly off, uttering angry cries of
_tah_! _tah_! Then throwing himself down behind a great block of
limestone, which had fallen from above, and which looked as if a thrust
would send it hurtling down some hundred feet, into the river below, he
waited till, as he fully expected, he saw the party of men appear down
below in the track; and then he followed their course, seeing them
disappear behind the trees, appear again, and after making divers short
cuts, as if their leader were well acquainted with the place, make off
for the ford. Then he watched them as they straggled across the river,
and struck into the narrow cliff path which led to the great dark-hued
cliff known as the Black Tor, where the Edens' impregnable stronghold
stood, perched upon a narrow ledge of rock which rose up like a
monstrous tongue from the earth, connected on one side by a narrow
natural bridge with the main cliff, the castellated building being
protected on all sides by a huge rift fully a couple of hundred feet
deep, the tongue being merely a portion of the cliff split away during
some convulsion of nature; or perhaps gradually separated by subsidence,
the top affording sufficient space for the building, and its courtyards.

Ralph watched the men until the last had disappeared; and then, knowing
from the configuration of the place as he had seen it from another point
of view, that he would probably not see them again for an hour or two,
perhaps not again that day, if Sir Edward Eden received the proposals of
Captain Purlrose favourably, he began slowly and thoughtfully to
descend. For he knew that it would be a serious matter for his father
if Sir Edward Eden seized upon the opportunity for strengthening his
retainers and attacking his rival.

The feud between the two families had lasted for generations, beginning
so far back that the origin was lost in the mists of time. All that
Ralph Darley knew was, that in the days of Henry the Eighth, an Eden had
done a Darley deadly injury that could never be forgiven, and ever since
the wrong had been handed down from father to son as a kind of
unpleasant faith by which it was the duty of all Darleys to be prepared
to exterminate all Edens; and if they could not exterminate them and
seiz