But obstacles only spurred him on to action, and he cried to himself, petulantly:
“Is it theirs? Who are they, to claim an open wild place like that? They’ll be saying next that all Darbyshire belongs to them. It’s as much ours as theirs, and, if we had our rights, it would be ours. I shall go, in spite of all the Darleys in the county. Who are they? Piece of rock and moor like that, and they claim it. Let them. I shall not stop away for them.”
The boy flushed, and ignoring the fact that he was about to commit a trespass, he slipped off shoes and hose, waded straight across the shallow river, and sat down on the other side to dry his feet, and put on hose and shoes again.
And all the time he felt a strong desire to glance up and down the river, to see if he had been observed by any one; but in his pride of heart he would not, for fear that he would be seen watching, and some one connected with his family’s enemies take it for a sign of fear.
This done, he rose, gave his feet a stamp, glanced up at the face of the cliff, to see one of the parent ravens fly off, uttering an angry croak; and then he began to bear off to the right, so as to ascend the low part of the cliff, reaching the top quite five hundred yards away, and turning at once to continue his ascent by walking along the edge, which rose steeply, till it reached the point above the raven’s nest, and then sloped down into a hollow, to rise once more into the wooded eminence which was crowned by Cliff Castle, the Darleys’ home.
“They’ve a deal better place than we,” said Mark to himself, as he strode on, in full defiance of the possibility of being seen, though it was hardly likely, a great patch of mighty beech-trees, mingled with firs, lying between the top of the big cliff and the Darleys’ dwelling. “More trees, and facing toward the west and south, with the river below them, while our home is treeless and bare, and looks to the north and east, and is often covered with snow when their side’s sunny and bright. My word! warm work, climbing up here, and the grass is as slippery as if it had been polished. Mustn’t go over. Father wouldn’t like it if I were to be killed; but I shouldn’t be, for I should come down in the tree-tops, and then fall from bough to bough into the river, and it’s deep just under the raven’s nest.”
Thinking this, he went on, up and up, cautiously, clear of head as one who had from childhood played about the cliffs, and reaching the summit breathless, to stand on the extreme verge, watching one of the ravens, which came sailing up, saw him at a distance, rose above his head, and then began to circle round, uttering hoarse cries.
“Ah, thief!” cried the lad; “I see what you have in your beak. A chicken; but your tricks are at an end. No more feeding young ravens here.”
“Better get to the nest, first, though,” said the boy laughingly; and he leaned forward, quite out of the perpendicular, to look down below the bush which sheltered the nest. “Easy enough: I can do it. If Ralph Darley had been half a fellow, he would have taken it himself. Better take off my sword, though. No; mustn’t leave that in the enemy’s country. I’ll take it down with me. Be nice to come up again, and find that one of those ragged Jacks had got hold of it! I wonder whether Sir Morton engaged them the other day. Very likely. He’s bad enough to do such an ungentlemanly thing. What did that fellow call himself. Pearl nose? Ought to have been Ruby nose. No, no; I remember now; it was Pearl Rose. My word, how high and mighty he was! Quite threatening. He’d go straight to Sir Morton Darley, if father did not enlist him and his men in our service. That upset father, just as he was thinking whether he should have them. He never could bear being threatened. How soon he sent them about their business, and threatened to summon the miners as well as our men. It will be awkward, though, if Sir Morton has engaged them, and strengthened his followers like that. May mean an attack. I wonder whether he did take their offer. If he has, father will wish he had agreed to the fellow’s terms. I don’t know, though. As he said to me, they would have been falling out with the mine men, and they seemed a ragged, drunken-looking set. Glad he sent them about their business.”
All this, suggested by the possibility of losing his sword, just when he was upon an enemy’s land; but he had not stopped on the top to think, for after lying down upon his breast, to gaze down and select the best place for his descent, he turned as he mused, lowered his legs, and began to descend, finding that after all his sword was not much in his way.