It had been carefully and neatly folded, but the boy had probably soiled and rumpled it through carelessness. It contained the following words: “ROBERT ELLERTON:— “Be on your guard to-day. Do not go beyond the reach of help without the means of self-defense, for danger lurks in your path! “A FRIEND.” Mr. Ellerton curled his lips in a scornful smile, as if he did not fully credit the writer’s story. Nevertheless he turned and went within the hotel, back up into his room, and slipped a couple of loaded pistols into his breast-pocket. When he appeared below again the groom stood waiting with his horse. He mounted, and, putting his spurs to the animal, galloped swiftly away in the direction of the cliffs which we have before mentioned, and in the recesses of which our hapless hero was imprisoned. Mr. Ellerton thought if he could gain the summit of these cliffs he should have a splendid view of the surrounding country. As he slowly ascended the side of the rugged cliffs, he began to ponder upon the strange warning he had received. Who could have written it? Who was there in all the country who knew him familiarly enough to call him Robert Ellerton? Where had he seen that handsome handwriting before? It was somewhere away back in the dim past; but when or where he could not recall, and the more he tried to remember the more puzzled he grew. Neither could he imagine what the danger was that lurked in his path. Had he been in a country among barbarians, he might well give heed to such a warning; but here, in such a quiet town, where almost every one gave his attention to cultivation and learning, it could not be possible that any very great danger could threaten him. Still, the more he meditated upon it, the more uneasy he grew. By this time he had reached the summit of the cliff. The prospect from this point was attractive. Far, far away as the eye could reach was the sea in all its grandeur, and reflecting from its silver bosom the many-tinted glories of yonder sky, while just at his feet its waves gently washed the huge crags with its foam and yellow sands; and involuntarily he murmured those beautiful lines from Tennyson’s pen: “Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, oh, sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me.” With a feeling half of pleasure, half of melancholy at his heart, he turned to leave the enchanted spot, when a shrill cry, as of some one in pain, startled him. Turning his eyes in the direction whence the sound proceeded, he saw just below him a noble horse, madly rearing and plunging among a cluster of bushes, while near by lay the prostrate form of a man apparently much injured, judging from his repeated cries and shrieks.