"But how long has she been gone ?" "How long do you think that you have been in your hole ?" "A few minutes.

It cannot be long.

Yet it must have been longer than I thought, for the shadows are changed." It was a full hour and a half since he fell, but I did not say so, lest it should be some sort of shock to him.

So I bade him sit down while I saw to a cut there was on his head--the only sign of hurt that he had.
"I thought that I was done for at first," he said.
"So thought I, until we found that you were not at the bottom.

Even now some of us have gone for ropes that we might search the cliff for you.