ied the lad; "I see what you have in your beak. A
chicken; but your tricks are at an end. No more feeding young ravens
here."

"Better get to the nest, first, though," said the boy laughingly; and he
leaned forward, quite out of the perpendicular, to look down below the
bush which sheltered the nest. "Easy enough: I can do it. If Ralph
Darley had been half a fellow, he would have taken it himself. Better
take off my sword, though. No; mustn't leave that in the enemy's
country. I'll take it down with me. Be nice to come up again, and find
that one of those ragged Jacks had got hold of it! I wonder whether Sir
Morton engaged them the other day. Very likely. He's bad enough to do
such an ungentlemanly thing. What did that fellow call himself. Pearl
nose? Ought to have been Ruby nose. No, no; I remember now; it was
Pearl Rose. My word, how high and mighty he was! Quite threatening.
He'd go straight to Sir Morton Darley, if father did not enlist him and
his men in our service. That upset father, just as he was thinking
whether he should have them. He never could bear being threatened. How
soon he sent them about their business, and threatened to summon the
miners as well as our men. It will be awkward, though, if Sir Morton
has engaged them, and strengthened his followers like that. May mean an
attack. I wonder whether he did take their offer. If he has, father
will wish he had agreed to the fellow's terms. I don't know, though.
As he said to me, they would have been falling out with the mine men,
and they seemed a ragged, drunken-looking set. Glad he sent them about
their business."

All this, suggested by the possibility of losing his sword, just when he
was upon an enemy's land; but he had not stopped on the top to think,
for after lying down upon his breast, to gaze down and select the best
place for his descent, he turned as he mused, lowered his legs, and
began to descend, finding that after all his sword was not much in his
way.

It was no new thing to Mark Eden to climb about the limestone cliffs,
which formed one side of the Gleame, sometimes sloping down gradually,
at others perpendicular, and in some cases partly overhanging, though in
the latter case, it meant only for a few winters before, after being
well saturated, the frost split them, piece by piece, till they went
thundering down among the trees, generally to bound right into the river
bed.

But, sloping or perpendicular, the