The man who held the revolver tossed it away reluctantly, and joined with the rest in attempting to hustle Cyril to the edge of the path. Crippled as he was, he fought savagely, contesting every inch of ground, determined not to give his assailants the opportunity of seizing him and hurling him down headlong. “If I go over, I won’t go alone,” was the thought in his mind; and he fixed on a huge fellow, whose efforts to catch him up bodily he had successfully foiled, as the companion whom he would clutch with his last strength and drag to destruction in his company. The unequal struggle was approaching its only possible end as Cyril was driven farther and farther from the rock. The pilgrims nearest the brink were beginning to edge away to the right and left in order to secure their own safety, thereby lessening the pressure on that side and adding to the force arrayed against the doomed man, when a bullet whizzed past Cyril’s ear and buried itself in the shoulder of the giant on whom he had decided as his comrade in the fatal plunge. “Bravo, Mansfield!” Cyril gathered breath to shout; but before the words were out of his mouth there was another shot, and the club fell from an uplifted hand which was brandishing it over his head. Crack! crack! crack! came the sharp whip-like reports, and man after man pushed his way, cursing, out of the mass, each effectually disabled for the time, but not one mortally wounded so far as Cyril could see. “Mansfield never fired those shots!” was his mental comment, as the number of his assailants continued to diminish, until only a few remained on the ledge, making no attempt to molest him, but looking about in bewilderment to see where the shots came from. “Git!” said a stentorian voice which seemed to resound from overhead, and the crestfallen pilgrims, grasping the meaning of the monosyllable, embraced with thankfulness the permission accorded them to retire. Once safely round the corner of the rock, they collected their wounded and made their way down the hill. The speaker--a lean, elderly man in white clothes and a pith helmet--kept them covered with his revolver until they were out of sight, then let himself lightly down to the path, and approached Cyril, who had sunk on the ground in perilous proximity to the edge of the precipice. “Well, sir?” he asked slowly. “I am infinitely indebted to you,” said Cyril, looking up with difficulty as his rescuer reached him.