Saltren stood looking on with apparent indifference, because he was still unable to realise what was being done; but the full importance of the fact that his home was being wrecked came on him with a sudden rush, the blood flew into his face, he uttered a shout of rage, plunged through the bushes, down the hill-side, dashed through the stream below in the valley, ran up to his cottage, and for a moment stood shaking his fist in inarticulate wrath at the men who looked down on him, laughing and jeering from the cliff. He had forgotten everything now except what was before him, and his anger made him blind and speechless. This was his house, built by his father; this his garden, tilled by his own hands. Who had a right to touch his property? The blacksmith from above shouted to him to stand off, another mass of rock was dislodged and would fall. Saltren could see what menaced. On the piece of rock grew a thorn-tree, and the thorn was swaying against the sky with the exertions of the men leaning on their levers, snapping the ligatures of root-fibre, and opening the joints in the stone. But Saltren had no fear for himself in his fury at the outrage being done him. Regardless of the warning cries addressed to him, he strode over the broken gate, and entered his partially ruined house. The blacksmith, alarmed, shouted to the miners engaged on the levers to desist from their work, as Saltren was in the house below; but they replied that the stone was moving, the crack widening between it and the rock, and that to arrest it was now impossible. The men held their breath, and were for the moment afraid of the consequence of what they had done. But they breathed freely a moment later, as they saw the captain emerge from his house and cross the garden, and take up a place out of the reach of danger. What they did not notice, or disregarded, was that he had brought out his gun with him. Stephen stood where he could command those on the cliff, and levelled and cocked his gun. His strong jaws were set; his dark eyebrows drawn over his flashing eyes; there was not a tremor in his muscles. He watched the swaying thorn; he saw that in another moment it would come down along with the mass of rock on which it stood, and which it grappled with its claw-like roots. “What are you about, cap’n?” asked Mrs. Kite, coming up hastily. He turned his head, smiled bitterly, and touched the barrel of his gun. “When that rock comes down,” he said, “one of those above shall follow it.” At that moment the block parted from the parent rock, and whirled beneath, followed by a train of dust. It struck the corner of the chimney, sent the stones of which it was built flying in all directions, and crashed through the roof, but left the thorn-bush athwart the gap it had torn. Before Saltren could discharge his gun, Mrs. Kite struck it up, and he fired it into the air.