"The Skegs. I've set my heart on exploring that pinnacle of scare, and was waiting until you could go with me. You were the first to unfold its dread mysteries, and you shall be the first to aid me in braving them." "Oh! But--I'm just the very least little bit afraid." "Naturally." "It's fortunate--or unfortunate--you didn't say where you intended going, or Jem Pollock wouldn't have let us have his boat for love or money." "He wouldn't?" "Not he! They're all in mortal terror of the place. To land there would bring them ill-luck for life. They even think they would hardly leave the rock alive. A boy was killed there once trying to get at some sea gulls' nests. They put it down to his temerity in landing there at all." "A set of oafs! Well, _we_ are going to land there--the tide is just right for it--and I wager long odds we don't come to grief in any sort of way. Village superstition will receive a salutary check--and I, even I, shall place your father under a debt to me for my share in exploding such a pagan relic. Look," he broke off, "there would be a good drop for a runaway horse or anyone tired of life." A bend in the coastline had shut out the fishing village behind them, for they had come some distance along the shore. The face of the cliff at this point rose sheer for a couple of hundred feet, where its surface was broken by a narrow ledge like a mere goat-path. Above this it slanted upwards to nearly twice that height. "It would, indeed," assented Olive. "That rejoices in the name of Hadden's Slide." "Does it? And who was Hadden, and what the mischief possessed him to try his hand at toboganning on such a spot?" Olive laughed. "Nobody knows. It is an old landslip, and it is supposed that a cottage belonging to one Hadden was carried away with it. But that is very old tradition." "A pity. I had quite thought another spectral wanderer had lighted on the place for his posthumous disportings, like my ancestor yonder at The Skegs." "Well, he would have a better right, for that is your property." "My property!" "Yes. It is a part of Cranston," answered Olive, looking surprised. "Oh--ah! I see. But you said _my_ property. Now Cranston is not _my_ property, and very likely never will be." This remark was made with a purpose. How would that strike her? he thought, and he watched her narrowly. But, however it happened to strike her, she took care that he should be none the wiser. "Why do you take me up so sharply?" she expostulated with pretty mock petulance. "Really I shall become quite afraid of you if you are going to be so precise. One can't always think for five minutes or so before making every innocent little remark. Now can one?" "Of course not. What's that extraordinary looking fissure there in front? It seems as if a stroke of lightning had split the whole cliff from brow to base."