At the foot of a tall cliff which suddenly rose up before him he was obliged to pause; on that side of the stream it seemed impossible to go further.

But as he hesitated, peering here and there under the branches of the dwarf oaks, he heard a voice, so suddenly, that he started in spite of himself.
"Guv'nor!" Copplestone looked around and saw nothing.

Then came a low laugh, as if the unseen person was enjoying his perplexity.
"Look overhead, guv'nor," said the voice.

"Look aloft!" Copplestone glanced upward, and saw a man's head and face, framed in a screen of bushes which grew on a shelf of the limestone cliff.

The head was crowned by a much worn fur cap; the face, very brown and seamed and wrinkled, was ornamented by a short, well-blackened clay pipe, from the bowl of which a wisp of blue smoke curled upward.