The strong mind of Sir John was prostrated before the fearfully excited feelings of his nephew, as a massy barrier of iron may be beaten down by a cannon-ball; and he descended the turret stair rebuked and humbled by an energy more potent than his own--as if, for the time, he and the young man had exchanged characters. Next morning Dallas was nowhere to be found. He was seen about sunrise, by a farmer of the parish, passing hurriedly along the ridge of the hill. The man, a staid Presbyterian, with whom he had once loved to converse, had saluted him as he passed, and then paused for half a second in the expectation that, as usual, he would address him in turn; but he seemed wholly unconscious of his presence. His face, he said, was of a deadly paleness, and his pace, though hurried, seemed strangely unequal, as if he were exhausted by indisposition or fatigue. The day wore on; and towards evening, Sir John, who could no longer conceal the anxiety which he felt, ordered out all his domestics in quest of him. But the night soon fell dark and rainy, and the party was on the eve of relinquishing the search, when, in passing along the edge of the _Look-out_, one of the servants observed something white lying on the little grassy bank which surmounts the precipice. It was an open Bible--the gift, as the title-page intimated, of Mary Anderson to Dallas Urquhart. Sir John struck his clenched fist against his forehead. “Gracious heaven!” he exclaimed, “he has destroyed himself--to the foot of the rock--to the foot of the rock;--and haste! for the tide is fast rising. But stay--let me forward--I will lead the way myself.” And, passing through his terrified attendants, he began to descend by a path nearly invisible in the darkness, and which, winding along the narrow shelves of the precipice, seemed barely accessible even by day to the light foot of the schoolboy. There was only one of the many who now thronged the rock edge who had courage enough to follow him--a tall spare man, wrapped up in a dark-coloured cloak. As the path became narrower and more broken, and overhung still more and more fearfully the dizzy descent, the stranger, who passed lightly and steadily along, repeatedly extended his arm to the assistance of the knight, who, through agitation and the stiffness incident to a period of life considerably advanced, stumbled frightfully as he hurried down. They reached the shore in safety together. All was dismally solitary. They could see only the dark rock towering over them, and the line of white waves which were tumbling over the beach, and had now begun to lash the base of the precipice. “Alas! my poor lost friend!” ejaculated the stranger--“lost, alas! for ever, when I had hoped most for thy return. Wretched, unfortunate creature! with little care of thine own for the things of this world, and yet ever led away by those who worshipped them as their only god--alas! alas! how hast thou perished!”