The two boys hurried down the garden, passed through a gap in the fence made by removing two of the palings, and set off in the reverse direction, toward the front of the house. Jack chose this course almost by instinct; somehow he felt sure that De Fronsac was making toward the cliff. Between this and the house ran the highroad. On reaching the road, Jack looked up and down: it ran straight for at least a third of a mile in each direction. No figure was in sight; yet Jack was sure that unless De Fronsac had actually run he could not have already got so far as a third of a mile ahead; and the road lay so white in the moonlight that no person could move along it without being plainly seen. "No good going on unless we can see him," said Jack. "Perhaps he has gone by the beach," suggested Arthur. "Right. The tide’s full, but there’s always room to walk at the foot of the cliffs. We’ll chance it." They ran across the road, vaulted the low wall on the other side, and doubled over the two fields separating them from the edge of the cliffs. As they approached the steep zigzag leading down to the shore they went more carefully. They did not immediately begin the descent, but made their way to a jutting portion of the cliff whence they could get a good view of the shore on either hand. "We can’t see him if he’s down there," said Arthur, still in a whisper. "No, the shadow’s too black," replied Jack. "And we can’t hear him, either. Wish it was sand! The rollers make such a noise on that shingle, and the tide’s too high for any one to walk on the sands." But he had hardly finished speaking when, looking to the left, he saw a black shade on the shingle, at a point where a mass of rocks at the foot of the cliff interrupted the direct path. It moved a few yards, and again disappeared. That was enough for Jack. "There he is!" he whispered. "Take care, youngster; we don’t want any broken necks." Quickly lowering himself over the steep side of the cliff until his feet touched the zigzag path, he began to race down as quickly as the need for quietness permitted, Arthur following somewhat less rapidly. At the foot he waited for his cousin, then both set off toward the village, the direction in which they had seen the shadow move. He almost wished now that he had refused to let Arthur come with him, for while the sound of one person running on the loose shingle might pass unheard, it was not so likely that two could run with the same security. But he did not care to send the boy back now, so they went on together, more slowly than he would have done alone.