"Don't be late," he cried; and he waded onward, stooping, and looking more humped and comical than ever, as he bent forward to throw his bait into likely places, while Mark Eden went onward down-stream. "I like old Master Rayburn," he said to himself; "but I wish he wouldn't be so bitter about the old trouble. It isn't our fault. Father would be only too glad to shake hands and be friends, if the Darleys were only nice, instead of being such savage beasts." He went on, forcing his way among the bushes, and clambering over the great blocks of stone which strewed the sides of the river, and then stopped suddenly, as he sent up a moor-hen, which flew across the river, dribbling its long thin toes in the water as it went. "I wonder," he said thoughtfully, "whether the Darleys think we are beasts too?" CHAPTER FIVE. HOW MARK EDEN FOUND THE RAVEN'S NEST. "Ah, there he goes," said Mark, beneath his breath, as he stood motionless, and watched a large raven flapping along, high overhead, in the direction he was taking. "Perhaps that's the cock bird. Looks big. The nest may be where old Master Rayburn says, or up this way, and the bird's going for food." He waited till the raven disappeared, and then went on down-stream, taking to a path higher up, which led him by a pretty cottage, standing in a niche at a bend of the river, so that the place had a good view up and down-stream, and with its pleasant garden, looked the sort of home which might well make its owner content. But Mark Eden's mind was too full of ravens' nests, to leave room for any contemplation of the old scholar's cottage; and he hurried on by the path, which cut off two or three bends of the river, taking him right away for quite a couple of miles, and bringing him to the water's-edge again, just in front of a mighty cliff, which towered up out of a dense grove of beeches on the other side of the river. The place was solitary and still in the extreme; and going close down to the water's-edge, Mark Eden seated himself upon a mossy stone, between two great hawthorns, which hid him from anything coming up or down-stream, while brambles, ferns, and clustering hemlock-plants, hid his back and front. It was a pleasant resting-place, to sit and watch the rapidly running river, which was very shallow here; and from his hiding-place, he could see the shadows of the ripples, and the stony bottom, and also those cast by trout, as they glided here and there, waiting for the unfortunate flies and caterpillars which had fallen from overhanging boughs, to be washed down the stream. But Mark had but a glance for the fish: his attention was taken up by the mass of precipitous stone before him, so steep, that it was only here and there, in cracks or on ledges, that herb or stunted bush could find a place to root; and as he scanned the precipice, from its foot among the beeches, to its brow, five hundred feet above where he sat, he wondered whether the ravens nested there.