“Why, of course not. She hasn’t gone back, or we should see her somewhere. We must have passed her. I know she must have gone close up to the cliff, so as to find a shady place. All along here is so much bigger and wilder than any one would think.”
“She must have gone up on the cliff, Harry.”
“Well, dear,” he said, laughing, “you and Julie are the nearest approach to little angels I ever knew, but even you two have no wings, and I don’t think Julie would get up the face of that cliff without.”
“Oh, pray, Harry, don’t talk so, now,” she cried; “I’m afraid—I don’t know what to think.”
“Don’t be afraid, little one,” he said, encouragingly, “we’ll find her directly.”
“Is it possible that any of the cliff has fallen, and crushed her?” said Cynthia, piteously.
He started, but spoke the next moment decisively.
“No. Such a fall would have made a noise like thunder. Depend upon it she has changed her place, and we shall find her fast asleep: unless the Red Rover, or some other dashing pirate, has landed, and carried her off in his yacht.”
“Oh, Harry, you make fun of it all,” cried Cynthia, with a stamp of her little foot, which crushed a tender, young, and unoffending mussel; “and I feel now quite a chill of horror lest that dreadful man—Oh, look, look, Harry! Who is that?”
She grasped his arm convulsively, and pointed at a part of the cliff, about a couple of hundred yards farther away from the town, where a figure could be seen cautiously climbing from ledge to ledge along the face of the stones, and in a position where a false step or a slip must have meant his falling a battered and bleeding mass upon the shingle beneath.