"Give it to me! Give it to me!" panted the boy, in a frenzy. "Give it to me! The paper! The paper!" and his clutch tightened like a band of steel.
Jasper smothered an oath. The path was narrow; unconsciously, or intentionally, the frenzied lad had edged them both, while talking, to the brink, and Jasper was standing with his back to it. In an instant he realized his danger; yes, danger! For, absurd as it seemed, the grasp of the weak, dying boy could not be shaken off; there was danger.
"Frank!" he cried.
"Give it me!" broke in the wild cry, and he pressed closer.
With an awful imprecation, Jasper seized him and bore him backward, but as he did so his foot slipped, and the boy, falling upon him, thrust a hand into Jasper's breast and snatched the paper.
Jasper was on his feet in a moment, and flying at him tore the paper from his grasp. The boy uttered a wild cry of despair, crouched down for a moment, and then with that one wild prayer upon his lips: "Give it me!" hurled himself upon his foe. For quite a minute the struggle, so awful in its inequality, raged between them. His opponent's strength so amazed Jasper that he was lost to all sense of the place in which they stood; in his wild effort to shake the boy off he unconsciously approached the edge of the cliff. Unconsciously on his part, but the other noticed it, even in his frenzy, and suddenly, as if inspired, he shrieked out—
"Look! Leycester! He is there behind you!"
Jasper started and turned his head; the boy seized the moment, and the next the narrow platform on which they had stood was empty. A wild hoarse shriek rose up, and mingled with the dull roar of the waves beneath, and then all was still!