He went swiftly, at a steady swinging pace,--and though his way took him among confused masses of rock, and fallen boulders, he thought nothing of these obstacles, vaulting lightly across them with the ease of a chamois, till he came to a point where there was a declivity running sheer down to invisible depths, from whence came the rumbling echo of falling water.

In this almost perpendicular wall of rock were a few ledges, like the precarious rungs of a broken ladder, and down these he prepared to go.

Clinging at first to the topmost edge of the precipice, he let himself down warily inch by inch till his figure entirely disappeared, sunken, as it were in darkness.

As he vanished there was a sudden cry--a rush as of wings--and a woman sprang up from amid bushes where she had lain hidden,--it was Manella.

For days and nights she had stolen away in the intervals of her work, to watch him--and nothing had chanced to excite her alarm till now--till now, when she had seen him emerge from his hut and pack up the mysterious box he carried,--and when she had heard him talking strangely to himself in a way she could not understand.
As soon as he started to walk she followed him, pushing through heavy brushwood and crawling along the ground where she could not be seen;--and now,--with dishevelled hair, and staring, terrified eyes she leaned over the edge of the precipice, baffled and desperate.