From here one could see almost the whole peninsula, the town falling away in waves of hill and valley to the west. The bay lay beneath him, the docks flat and square, as if drawn on a map, red-funneled steamers lying alongside. In the fairway, vessels rode at anchor, lighted by the moon. The top of the hill was commanded by a huge, castellated, barn-like white structure which had once been used as a pleasure pavilion, but was now deserted, save by a rascally herd of tramps. At a near view its ruined, deserted grandeur showed unkempt and dingy. By its side, a city park, crowning the crest, scantily cultured and improved, indicated the first rude beginning of formal arrangement. Moldering, displaced concrete walls and seats showed what had been done and neglected. He skirted the eastern slope of the hill, went up and down one-sided streets, streets that dipped and slid longitudinally, streets tilted transversely, keeping along a path at the top till he came to the cliff. Here was the prime scandal of the town, naked in all its horror. The quarrymen had, with their blasting, robbed the hill inch by inch, foot by foot and acre by acre. Already a whole city block had disappeared, caving gradually away to tumble to the talus of gravel at the foot of the steep slope. For years, the neighborhood had been terrorized by this irresistible, ever-approaching fate. The edge of the precipice drew nearer and nearer the houses, bit off a corner of the garden here, ate away a piece of fence there, till the danger-line approached the habitations themselves. Nor did it stop there; it crept below the floors, it sapped the foundations till the house had to be abandoned. Then with a crash, some afternoon, the whole structure would fall into the hollow. House after house had disappeared, family after family had been ruined. The crime was rank and outrageous, but it had not been stopped. As Granthope walked, he saw bits of such deserted residences. Here a flight of stone steps on the verge of the height, there fences running giddily off into the air or drain-pipes, broken, sticking over the edge. The hazardous margin was now fenced off—at any moment a huge mass might slip away and slide thundering below. At the foot of the cliff stood the lead-colored building housing the stone-crusher, whose insatiate appetite had caused this sacrifice of property. It was ready to feed again on the morrow. He walked to the edge and looked down a sharp incline, a few rods away from the most dangerous part of the cliff. He was outside the fence, now, with nothing between him and the slope. As he stood there, a dog barked suddenly behind him. He turned—his foot slipped upon a stone, twisted under him, and he fell outward. He clutched at the loose dirt, but could not save himself and rolled over and over down the slope. Forty feet down his head struck a boulder and he lost consciousness.