He leapt fissure after fissure like a young roe, fled to the top of the Downfall and looked over. Did the light show through the tarpaulin? Alack!--there must be a rent somewhere--for he saw a dim glow-worm light beyond the cliff, on the dark rib of the mountain. It was invisible from below, but any roving eye from the top would be caught by it in an instant. In a second he had raced along the edge, dived in and out of the blocks, guiding his way by a sort of bat's instinct, till he reached the rocky stairway, which he descended at imminent risk of his neck. 'Put your hand ower t'leet, Louie, till I move t'stone!' The light disappeared, David crept in, and the two children crouched together in a glow of excitement. 'Is't Uncle Reuben?' whispered Louie, pressing her face against the side of the rocks, and trying to look through the chink between it and the covering stone. 'Aye--wi a lantern. But there's talkin--theer's someone else. Jim Wigson, mebbe.' 'If it's Jim Wigson,' said Louie, between her small, shut teeth, 'I'll bite him!' 'Cos yo're a gell! Gells and cats bite--they can't do nowt else!' Whereupon Louie pinched him, and David, giving an involuntary kick as he felt the nip, went into first a fit of smothered laughter, and then seized her arm in a tight grip. 'Keep quiet, conno yo? Now they're coomin, an I bleeve they're coomin this way!' But after another minute's waiting, he was quite unable to obey his own injunction and he crept out on the stone overlooking the precipice to look. 'Coom back! They'll see yo.' cried Louie, in a shrill whisper; and she caught him by the ankle. David gave a kick. 'Let goo; if yo do 'at I shall fall an be kilt!' She held her breath. Presently, with an exclamation, he knelt down and looked over the edge of the great sloping block which served them for roof. 'Wal, I niver! Theer's nobory but Uncle Reuben, an he's talkin to hissel. Wal, this is a rum skit!' And he stayed outside watching, in spite of Louie's angry commands to him to come back into the den. David had no fears of being discovered by Uncle Reuben. If it had been Jim Wigson it would have been different. Presently, on the path some sixty feet above them, but hidden from them by the mass of tumbled rocks through which they had descended, they heard someone puffing and blowing, a stick striking and slipping on the stones, and weird rays of light stole down the mountain-side, and in and out of the vast blocks with which it was overstrewn. 'He's stopt up theer,' said David, creeping in under the gable, 'an I mun hear what he's sayin. I'm gooin up nearer. If yo coom we'll be caught.' 'Yo stoopid!' cried Louie. But he had crawled up the narrow chimney they had come down by in a moment, and she was left alone. Her spirit failed her a little. She daren't climb after him in the dark.