In the dead of night, Jane Marley came to the side of her daughter's bed, and asked: 'Why are you tossing so unceasingly?' 'I cannot sleep.' 'What disturbs you?' 'O mother! I have done wrong. I was desirous of procuring a pair of choughs. No one would trouble himself, and risk his neck to get them for me but Jack Rattenbury, and he will go over the White Cliff in search for them. If anything were to happen to him――――' she choked. 'Nothing will happen to him,' said her mother. 'Compose yourself. _He_ would not risk himself for either of us. He hates us too heartily. He probably knows where are some birds easily reached, or he is fooling you with a promise to do that which he has no intention of performing. He will run into no danger on _our_ account, be certain of that.' Somewhat relieved in mind, Winefred lay quieter. There was reason in her mother's words. She herself would adventure nothing for Jack, and why should he run into danger on her account? Nevertheless she was not wholly reassured, and rising before daybreak unperceived by her mother, she went down to the ferry, crossed with a couple of women bound for Seaton with eggs, and made her way to the White Cliff along the beach; then, turning up a cleft at the junction of the chalk and the red sandstone, she ascended to the summit, which rises four hundred and twenty-five feet above the sea, not perpendicularly, but so as to overhang. A haze covered the water, and the bald white crag stood up as a horn of the moon issuing from the clouds. Winefred was out of breath from the ascent, which was steep, and a catch came in her throat when she saw three figures, of which one was Jack, by an old thornbush that grew close to the edge. As she had walked along the shore she had used the opportunity to observe the face of the crag more attentively than she had ever done before, and she had seen how that it had been gnawed into by the sea-winds till it resembled a piece of old Stilton cheese of which little save the rind is firm, and how difficult and perilous it would be for any one to attempt to reach the recesses and ledges where the birds harboured. To ascend from the beach would be a sheer impossibility; moreover, the places employed by the sea-birds for breeding were all near the summit, and were protected by the beetling brows of that summit. With quivering lip, Winefred went to the three young men she saw before her, and singling out Jack, said roughly, 'It is nonsense――I do not want the choughs.' 'You offered a guinea for them,' he replied. 'Take the guinea. I do not choose to endanger any one's life. I had not noticed before how the brow overhangs. I will not have the choughs.' 'I am satisfied that they are possible to be got,' said he; 'I can but try.' 'I will not have you try.' 'You held me to my promise.' 'I hold you no more. I withdraw everything I said. But you shall have the guinea.' 'I do not want your guinea. I shall go after the birds all the same.'