ng up the hill
out of which it had been excavated. He shouted warningly to her from
below where he happened to be passing. She was really in considerable
danger. At the sound of his voice she started back and retreated out of
his sight amongst some young Scotch firs growing near the very brink of
the precipice.

"I sat down on a bank of grass," Marlow went on. "She had given me a
turn. The hem of her skirt seemed to float over that awful sheer drop,
she was so close to the edge. An absurd thing to do. A perfectly mad
trick--for no conceivable object! I was reflecting on the foolhardiness
of the average girl and remembering some other instances of the kind,
when she came into view walking down the steep curve of the road. She
had Mrs. Fyne's walking-stick and was escorted by the Fyne dog. Her dead
white face struck me with astonishment, so that I forgot to raise my hat.
I just sat and stared. The dog, a vivacious and amiable animal which for
some inscrutable reason had bestowed his friendship on my unworthy self,
rushed up the bank demonstratively and insinuated himself under my arm.

The girl-friend (it was one of them) went past some way as though she had
not seen me, then stopped and called the dog to her several times; but he
only nestled closer to my side, and when I tried to push him away
developed that remarkable power of internal resistance by which a dog
makes himself practically immovable by anything short of a kick. She
looked over her shoulder and her arched eyebrows frowned above her
blanched face. It was almost a scowl. Then the expression changed. She
looked unhappy. "Come here!" she cried once more in an angry and
distressed tone. I took off my hat at last, but the dog hanging out his
tongue with that cheerfully imbecile expression some dogs know so well
how to put on when it suits their purpose, pretended to be deaf.

She cried from the distance desperately.

"Perhaps you will take him to the cottage then. I can't wait."

"I won't be responsible for that dog," I protested getting down the bank
and advancing towards her. She looked very hurt, apparently by the
desertion of the dog. "But if you let me walk with you he will follow us
all right," I suggested.

She moved on without answering me. The dog launched himself suddenly
full speed down the road receding from us in a small cloud of dust. It
vanished in the distance, and presently we came up with him lying on the
grass. He