"I do wonder what can have become of the child," said Claud, dubiously.
"Little cur!" said the ordinary gentle Henry, viciously. "I am not at all sorry if he has a fair good fright; it may read him a lesson."
Unwillingly they turned from the scene of interest, and began their scramble up the chalky slopes, rendered as slippery as ice by the heavy rains. Neither had dined that night, and both were feeling exhausted after the tension of the last few hours. They walked silently forward, each filled with vague forbodings respecting Godfrey.
The wind was still what, inland, would be called a gale, too high to make conversation possible. Overhead, rifts in the night-black clouds were beginning to appear; the waning moon must be by now above the horizon, for the jagged edges of the vapors were silver.
Claud was deeply meditating over his night's experience; it seemed years since he parted from Wynifred that afternoon. How much had happened since!
His foot struck against something as he walked. Being tired, he was walking carelessly, and, as the grass was intensely slippery, he came down on his hands and knees, making use of a forcible expression.
Thus brought into the near neighborhood of the object which caused his fall, he discovered that it was neither a stick nor a stone, but a book—a book lying out on the cliff, and reduced to a pulp by the torrents of rain which had soaked it.
"I say, Fowler, what's this?" he said eagerly, regaining his feet, the whole of the front of his person plastered with a whitish slime. "Here's a book! Does that help us—eh?"
Mr. Fowler turned quickly.
"Let me look," he said.