"Yes; William Blads. He lodges with Mrs. Crudge next to our cottage." We continued to descend through the gorse for another quarter of an hour or so until an extraordinary sound at our feet brought us both to an halt. It was the strangest melancholy screeching sound that ever I had heard: it was so harsh it pierced the ears; it was so wild and eerie that I could hardly believe a voice uttered it. It was like a shrill cry of pain uttered by some live thing that was hardly human. It startled me beyond words, and the more so because it rose out of the fog directly at our feet. Dick Parmiter trembled at my side. "Quick," he whispered in a shaking voice; "let us go! Oh, let us go!" But he could not move for all his moaning. His limbs shook as though he had the fever; terror chained him there to the ground. Had I not known the boy under other circumstances, I should have set him down for a coward. I took a step forward. Dick caught hold of my arm and muttered something, but his voice so wavered and gasped I could not distinguish what he said. I shook his arm off, and again stepped forward for one, two, three paces. As I took the third pace the ground suddenly sloped, my feet slipped on the wet grass; I let go of my valise, and I fell to my full length upon my back, and slid. And the moment I began to slide my feet touched nothing. I caught at the grass, and the roots of it came away in my hands. I turned over on my face. Half my body was now hanging over the edge. I hung for a second by my waist, and as I felt my waist slipping, I struck out wildly upon each side with my arms. My right arm struck against a bush of gorse; I seized hold of it, and it bent, but it did not break. I lifted a knee carefully, set it on the edge, and so crawled up the slope again. Dick was lying on his face peering down towards me. "My God," said he, "I thought you had fallen;" and reaching out his hands, he caught both my arms as though he was afraid I should slip again. "Oh, quick," he said, "let us go!" And again I heard the shrill screech rise up from that hollow into which I had so nearly fallen. It was repeated and repeated with a regular interval between--an interval long enough for Dick to reiterate his eager prayer. "It has begun again," said I. "It has never ceased since we first heard it," said Dick, and no doubt he spoke the truth; only I had been deaf to it from the moment my foot slipped until now. "Let us go," and picking up my valise he hurried me away, turning his head as he went, shuddering whenever he heard that cry. "But it may be some one in distress--some one who needs help." "No, no," he cried; "it is no one. I will tell you to-morrow." We skirted the top of the hollow, and once more descended. The fog showed no sign of clearing, but Parmiter walked with an assured tread, and in a little time he began to recover his spirits. "We are close to the house," said he.