GIDDY.
OLD Mr. Burton, with his companion, had got on, languid and smiling, but very agreeably, notwithstanding his occasional pauses for rest; and I shall now describe the point at which he said with a smile, and a sigh, and a little shrug —
“Ha, ha-at last — here we are!”
He looked pallid, tired, and in a dark reverie, from which, suddenly awakening, he said —
‘You can see the flowers, there.”
With his stick he pointed; and she answered, delighted —
“Oh, dear! how beautiful — how wonderful! but how shall we get them?”
The old road, half-hidden, with its close nap of grass, and skirted with the spreading mantle of heath and ferns that cover the steeps that ascend at their right, is traced at the downward side by a half-obliterated fence of peat and here and there of stones, which had in this spot been displaced. With a steep convexity, the hill bends downward here. The near horizon, as you look from the road, terminates in a sudden curve not ten steps down the descent.
‘I am jo unaccountably and absurdly knocked up, to-day,” said he, “that I can do nothing. Do you see just there, not nine feet down the slope, that little ridge? I rested my feet upon that, and plucked the flower, and came up again; but to-day I am quite good-for-nothing, as you see — utterly done up — hardly able to walk; but if you are not afraid to do what an old fellow did only two days ago, you can hold the end of my stick, and with your feet resting on that little ledge and so pluck the flowers, as many as you like. It is perfectly easy, or I should not allow you to try.”
Laura Mildmay could walk those mountains, to which from her childhood she had been accustomed, like a chamois; but this was an unpleasant venture. Over the brow of the steep you could see, five hundred feet below, the distant town of Golden Friars like a tiny toy village beneath them, and a strip of the blue lake.
“Are you quite sure, Mr. Burton, that the little ridge there, as you call it, is perfectly firm?”
“As the mountain itself, my dear child. I stood upon it for five minutes on Saturday, of course leaning on the bank at the same time; and I weigh fourteen stone, and you hardly seven.”
“Oh, then, there can be no danger,” she said. “It would be so cowardly to return without the flowers; and if you kindly hold your stick to me, it will make me feel quite comfortable.”
In a moment it was arranged, and, kneeling on the slope, and holding fast to the end of the stick, she allowed herself to slide down till her feet rested on the prominence on which she relied for support.
It turned out to be merely a mass of peat, detached from its position at the edge of the road; and it instantly slipped under the pressure of her feet, and slid down the smooth turf, fast er and faster, till it disappeared ovei the deepening edge.
“Hullo! what’s that! Good heaven!” cried Mr. Burton from above, as in her momentary panic she suddenly endeavoured to recover the summit by the aid of his stick, which escaped from his hold, and she found herself lying, without support, upon the smooth declivity, which was clothed with a short grass baked by the sun as brown and shiny as the hair on the back of a trunk.
“Don’t be frightened — be steady, it will be all right,” cried Mr. Burton. But the young lady was already slipping slowly down the glassy surface.
Her tremendous situation was now too plain, and a piercing scream burst from her lips and soared away through the wide vacuity.
She had turned on her side, her shoulder touching the smooth turf, trying vainly to bury her fingers in the hard surface. Thus, inch by inch, slowly she glided by the end of a huge mass of rock which hung close by her, flanking her descent, and then, within a foot, she caught a glimpse of that towards which, a little lower down, she was drifting. She was, as it were, slipping down the steep roof of a dome, and near enough to its side-edge to measure the fall to which she was hastening. There suddenly opened the sunny landscape beneath, the immense distance and the smooth stone precipice, that, with a slight convexity, curved darkly down five hundred feet to the verge of the lake, like a wall. She shut her eyes and screamed again.
A man passing by, summoned by that cry, ran to the spot, and, with a word or two of horror in his queer dialect, ran to his dwelling to fetch a rope.
At every yard the bank was steeper. Little hope there was. She felt herself still slipping. Her hand lighted on a solitary tuft of fern, and she caught it. She opened her eyes.
A crow came sailing slowly over, only a few feet above the level of the turf, and dived towards her as it passed, curiously, and so swooped over the airy ledge.
She heard the singing of some ladies in a boat, far below, upon the lake, rising sweet and faint, but distinct.
Every leaf and blade of vegetation on the slanting brink close under her eye, grew horribly sharp and exaggerated.
With white lips and eyes dimming with terror, she held by the frail stay her hand but encountered. It broke, and with it in her fingers she again slipped downward, a little more, and a little more, and now a good deal, and she felt that her feet had actually cleared the edge.
And now a frenzy seized Mr. Burton, who, in distraction, threw himself on his knees, crying aloud; and as he stood up and stamped about in his agony, a great stone, dislodged by him, bounded down so close that the earth shook under her, as it flew over the edge of the cliff.
Again her fingers encountered a resisting object, a little angle of rock peeped scarce an inch above the turf.
Once more Mr. Burton’s stampings and running hither and thither brought down a piece of rock which again bounded close by her.
She shut her eyes, and wildly she sex earned the awful name of her Creator; her fingers scarcely felt the hold on which her next moment’s life depended.
But, heaven and earth! what is this?
Voices are heard above — many; one that she knew. It was Charles Shirley’s, approaching lower and lower, nearer and nearer, cheering, exhorting her; and now a strong arm is round her — firmly, convulsively.
A rope with a running knot, sustained by many hands from above, secures him.
At first, little by little, but now with better progress, they are making upward way — and still — and still — and the same powerful arm clasps her like a girdle of iron.
And now — thank Heaven! at last — at top, safe-on level ground; and Laura Mildmay knows no more for many minutes. She has fainted.
What has become of Mr. Burton, alias Blinks, alias Amyot, alias and truly Captain Torquil — alive, and still possessed with his sordid and murderous purpose? While every hand was employed in the rescue of Laura Mildmay, this man, accused of many forgeries and frauds, and crowning his guilt with this ferocious perfidy, has escaped.