The lady on the rock appeared to deem it time to return home, for, withdrawing her eyes from the distant view, she cast them downward in search of the path by which to descend; when, amid the rocks and huge rough stones which lay scattered beneath like the ruins of a former world, she thought she saw something move, though very slightly. She looked at it for a time; it quitted not the spot where she first descried it; yet, still it certainly did move! She descended, approached, and beheld a poor little boy, who seemed about five or six years old. He was sitting on the ground; the wretched rags, in which he was dressed, were dripping with wet; his poor limbs, which were all bent together, and drawn up close to his face, trembled extremely, while his little hands, with their long emaciated fingers, spread and hooked round his knees, seemed endeavouring to hold them, as though the violence of their motion was becoming too much for his frame to bear. The lady stood looking down on him for a moment with mingled pity and surprise. He was slowly rocking himself from side to side: it was a movement quite expressive of despondency, his chin rested on the backs of the hands which held his knees, and his eyes wandered hopelessly among the bare stones that lay around him, while his head retained the same fixed position. "Little boy, look up!" she said, taking one of his cold wet hands in hers. He raised his face; misery was depicted in every feature: his teeth chattered excessively, and his poor eyes, that swam in tears, were now lifted to hers with an expression truly piteous. "Poor child! come with me," she said. Something like hope began to dawn on his forlorn countenance; but she finished her sentence, in what she intended for the most comforting manner, by saying, "and I will take you home to your mother." He had not risen. He drew his hand from hers, turned on his face on the ground with the universal shudder of terror, and, clinging to the rocks, cried, "No! no! no!" She endeavoured to soothe him, and to untwist his fingers from the fastenings, which, like so many fibres of roots, they had found for themselves among the crevices and broken fragments of his flinty bed; but he hid his face against the hard stone, and would not turn round. When she succeeded at length in detaching one of his hands, and was gently endeavouring to raise him, his inward shudderings increased so visibly that she became fearful of throwing him into convulsions: she desisted therefore, and, feigning to go away, removed a few paces; then stopped, and said, "Well! I am going; but won't you tell me your name?" "Edmund," he sobbed out; without, however, raising his head.