We had gathered but a handful or two, when I heard a crashing in the underbrush at the top of the cliff; and in a second, catching Mizpah by the hand, I had dragged her into hiding. Through a screen of dark and drooping hemlock boughs we gazed intently at the top of the cliff,--and I noted, without thinking worth while to remedy my oversight, that I had forgotten to release Mizpah's hand. The crashing noise, mingled with some sharp outcries of rage and fear, continued for several minutes. Then there was silence; and I saw at the brink a pointed cap stuck full of feathers, and the glare of a black and yellow cloak. "Grul!" I whispered, in astonishment; and I felt an answering surprise in the tightened clasp of Mizpah's hand. A moment more and Grul peered over the brink, scrutinizing the upper and lower reaches of the river. He held a coil of rope, one end of which he had made fast to a stout birch tree which leaned well out over the edge. "What is he going to do?" murmured Mizpah, with wide eyes. "We'll soon see!" said I, marvelling mightily. The apparition vanished for some minutes, then suddenly reappeared close to the brink. He carried, as lightly as if it had been a bundle of straw, the body of a man, so bound about with many cords as to remind me of nothing so much as a fly in the death wrappings of some black and yellow spider. To add to the semblance, the victim was dressed in black,--and a closer scrutiny showed that he was a priest. "It is the Black Abbe, none other," I murmured, in a kind of awe; while Mizpah shrank closer to my side with a sense of impending tragedies. "Grul has come to his revenge!" I added. In a business fashion Grul knotted the end of his coil of rope about the prisoner's body, the feathers and flowers in his cap, meanwhile, nodding with a kind of satisfied rhythm. Then he lowered the swathed and helpless but silently writhing figure a little way from the brink, governing the rope with ease by means of a half-twist about a jutting stump. There was something indescribably terrifying in the sight of the fettered form swinging over the deep, with shudderings and twistings, and the safe edge not a yard length above him. I pitied him in spite of myself; and I put a hand over Mizpah's eyes that she might not see what was coming. But she pushed my hand away, and stared in a fascination. For some moments Grul gazed down in silence upon his victim. I fancied I caught the soul-piercing flame of his mad eyes; but this was doubtless due to my imagination rather than to the excellence of my vision. Suddenly the victim, his fortitude giving way with the sense of the deadly gulf beneath him, and with the pitiless inquisition of that gaze bent down upon him, broke out into wild pleadings, desperate entreaties, screams of anguished fear, till I myself trembled at it, and Mizpah covered her ears.