“Wait a moment,” cried Hankes, with an immense effort. “If I were once across this”—he was going to add an epithet, but restrained himself—“this place, is there nothing more of the same kind afterwards?”
“Is n't there, faith!” cried the man. “Isn't there the Clunk, where the beast has to step over gullies five-and-thirty or forty feet deep? Isn't there Tim's Island, a little spot where you must turn your horse round with the sea four hundred feet under you? Is n't there the Devil's Nose—”
“There, there, you need n't go on, my good fellow; I 'll turn back.”
“Look where she is now,” said the man, pointing with his whip to a rocky ledge hundreds of feet down, along which a figure on horseback might be seen creeping slowly along. “'Tis there, where she's stealing along now, you need the good head and the quick hand. May I never!” exclaimed he, in terror, “if them isn't goats that's coming up to meet her! Merciful Joseph! what'll she do? There, they are under the horse's legs, forcing their way through! Look how the devils are rushing all round and about her! If the beast moves an inch—” A wild cry broke from the old man here, for a fragment of rock, displaced by the rushing herd, had just come thundering down the cliff, and splashed into the sea beneath. “The heavens be praised! she's safe,” muttered he, piously crossing himself; and then, without a word more, and as if angry at his own delay, he pressed his horse forward to follow her.
It was in vain Hankes cried to him to wait,—to stop for only an instant,—that he, too, was ready to go,—not to leave him and desert him there,—that he knew not where to turn him, nor could ever retrace his way,—already the man was lost to view and hearing, and all the vain entreaties were uttered to the winds. As for Sybella, her perilous pathway gave her quite enough to do not to bestow a thought upon her companion; nor, indeed, had she much recollection of him till the old groom overtook her on the sandy beach, and recounted to her, not without a certain touch of humor, Mr. Hankes's terror and despair.
“It was cruel to leave him, Ned,” said she, trying to repress a smile at the old man's narrative. “I think you must go back, and leave me to pursue my way alone.”
“Sorra one o' me will go back to the likes of him. 'T is for your own self, and ne'er another, I'd be riskin' my neck in the same spot,” said he, resolutely.
“But what's to become of him, Ned? He knows nothing of the country; he 'll not find his way back to Glengariff.”
“Let him alone; devil a harm he 'll come to. 'T is chaps like that never comes to mischief. He 'll wander about there till day breaks, and maybe find his way to Duffs Mill, or, at all events, the boy with the letter-bag from Caherclough is sure to see him.”