"At home, doctor, as bad as your patient there. You must be nurse and doctor too." Without a word old Prawle took a couple of strides across the room, and, lifting Bessie as if she had been a babe, he carried her into Madge's chamber and laid her upon the bed. The motion revived her, though, and, after a few words of advice, the doctor went off homeward, and Geoffrey and old Prawle walked up and down the cliff, the father going in at intervals to see that Bess was sleeping comfortably, and listening at her door. "Not to-night," the old man muttered; "not to-night. I can't go and leave my poor lass there, perhaps to die. It'll keep a bit--it'll keep a bit;" and he rejoined Geoffrey. The next morning at daybreak they took a lantern and explored the adit, the old man pointing out the traces of Bessie's trailing garments, and here and there a spot or two of blood upon the rock. They crossed the winze, and Geoffrey wondered how a woman could have attempted it in the dark; and at last they stood in a stooping position at the end, looking at the black surface of the water in the old shaft, upon which was floating Bessie's hat and the child's hood. They could not reach them, so they returned, old Prawle saying, in a curiously harsh voice,-- "She didn't tell a lie, Master Trethick, eh?" "A lie?" exclaimed Geoffrey. "It is too horrible almost to believe." "Horrible? Yes. Now let's go and look at the pit mouth." Geoffrey followed him, feeling as if it were all part of some terrible dream, and wondering what effect it would have upon Madge. "Why, Prawle," he exclaimed, stopping short, "that villain must have thought he was throwing in mother and child." "Ay, I dessay," said the old man. "No doubt, but it makes no difference to me. He threw down my Bess, and that's enough for me. Come on." There was little to see on the turf by the old shaft after they had climbed the cliff; but, as Geoffrey went close to the mouth and looked down into the black void, he turned away with a shudder, wondering how any one could have been hurled down there in the darkness of the night, and yet have lived to see another day. "Come away, Prawle," he said hoarsely. "What have you got there?" "Button off a man's coat," he said shortly. "Less than that's been enough to send any one to the gallows. But I don't want to send him." "No," said Geoffrey; "the horror of what what he has done--the murder of his own child--will stay with him to his grave." "If he ever has one," muttered Prawle. Geoffrey looked at him searchingly, but the old man's face was as inscrutable as that of a sphinx; and, leading the way back, he went down into his favourite place by the boat below the face of the cliff, and as soon as Geoffrey had made a hasty breakfast, which he found Bessie had prepared, he went off to the cottage to see Mrs Mullion, and tell her of the events of the past night. CHAPTER FIFTY NINE. JONAH.