He made a fierce clutch at the paper she held out in the darkness, half to take it, half to strike it from her hand, as only part of some miserable deceit, and the latter act was successful, for it fell down the side of the precipice--down toward the river surging on its way. She muttered a wild cry, and then went on quickly. "It was late--my father had gone out, but I would not disappoint you, Clive; and I came on, shivering as I found it would soon be dark; but I knew that your strong arms would soon be round me to protect me, and I hurried on, till there in the darkest part I felt that you were waiting for me, and--that is all." Her hurried, passionate words ceased, and she ended her explanation with those three feeble, lame, to him inconclusive, words. Then yielding herself to his pressure, she walked on by his side, broken, exhausted by her emotion, dumb now, as she waited for him to speak. She waited in vain till the river side was reached, and from lower down in the darkness there came a cheery whistle as the Major was returning from the long walk into which he had been drawn by his ill success. Clive Reed's nerves twitched, but he turned rapidly through the garden with Dinah half fainting, and ready to cling to one of the supports of the porch as he at last set her free. "What--Clive--dearest," she whispered faintly--"tell me--what are you going to do?" He bent down with his lips close to her ear, and whispered sharply-- "Kill him--or he shall me." Then, with a hurried step he sprang up through the higher part of the garden in and out among the shrubs and bushes, climbed on to the very top, and struck out over the mountain slopes. Dinah listened till the rustling sounds he made died away, and then, hot and trembling, she went up slowly to her room, and sat down with her face buried in her hands; but there was no relief--the source of her tears was dry. Clive took a short cut across the rugged moorland, and twice over he narrowly escaped death. The first time he was pulled up short by coming violently in the darkness against the rough, unmortared wall built up round an ancient shaft on the mine land; and as he checked himself by grasping the loose stones, one of them fell over and went down and down, striking once against the side, and sending a chill through him as a reverberating roar came up, followed at a short interval by a dull echoing splash, after which he could hear the water hiss and suck against the sides, sending up strange whisperings, which sounded to his disturbed imagination like demoniacal confidences about Dinah Gurdon and his brother. He hurried away, as another stone was dislodged, and the sullen plunge came to his ear when he was yards distant, tearing along in the most reckless way, to trip at last over a stone and fall headlong down one of the deep gully-like ravines with which the mountain land was scored.