seconds," he said, as he walked away.

Hugh was in no hurry. It was a wonderfully calm evening. The sea looked
like a sheet of silver, motionless, silent, immense. The tide was very
low. The sand-dunes looked mere hummocks from that great height. Myriads
of martens were circling about the edge of the cliff, which was
protected by a crazy wooden railing. He sat and watched them without
much interest. He was thinking chiefly of that one cottage on the shore
a hundred feet below, which he knew so well.

He wondered if Molly had been to the summer-house to look for him; and
then, chancing to glance up, he caught sight of her coming towards him
from the roadside. At the same instant something jerked in the motor,
and it began to move. It was facing up the hill, and the angle was a
steep one. Very slowly at first the wheels revolved, and the car moved
straight backwards as if pushed by an unseen hand.

Hugh realised the danger in a moment. The road curved sharply not a
dozen yards behind him, and at that curve was the sheer precipice of the
cliff. He was powerless to apply the brakes, and he could not even throw
himself out. The sudden consciousness of this ran through him piercing
as a sword-blade.

In every pulse of his being he felt the intense, the paralysing horror
of violent death. For the first awful moment he could not even call for
help. The sensation of falling headlong backwards gripped his throat
and choked his utterance.

He made a wild, ineffectual movement with his hands. And then he heard a
loud cry. A woman's figure flashed towards him. She seemed to swoop as
the martens swooped along the face of the cliff. The car was running
smoothly towards that awful edge. He felt that it was very
near--horribly near; but he could not turn to look.

Even as the thought darted through his brain he saw Molly, wide-eyed,
frenzied, clinging to the side of the car. She was in the act of
springing on to it, and that knowledge loosened his tongue.

He yelled to her hoarsely to keep away. He even tried to thrust her
hands off the woodwork. But she withstood him fiercely, with a strength
that agonised and overcame. In a second she was on the step, where she
swayed perilously, then fell forward on her hands and knees at his feet.

The car continued to run back. There came a sudden jerk, a crash of
rending wood, a frightful pause. The railing had splintered. They were
on the brink. Hugh bent and tried to take her in his arm