the young birds. From that point, however, a smooth shelf,
without projection or cavity, descended at an angle of about forty to
the nest, and terminated abruptly, without ledge or margin, in the
overhanging precipice. Have I not, I asked, crept along a roof of even a
steeper slope than that of the shelf? Why not, in like manner, creep
along it to the nest, where there is firm footing? I had actually
stretched out my naked foot to take the first step, when I observed, as
the sun suddenly broke out from behind a cloud, that the light glistened
on the smooth surface. It was incrusted over by a thin layer of
chlorite, slippery as the mixture of soap and grease that the
ship-carpenter spreads over his slips on the morning of a launch. I at
once saw there was an element of danger in the way, on which I had at
first failed to calculate; and so, relinquishing the attempt as
hopeless, I returned by the path I had come, and thought no more of
robbing the raven's nest. It was, however, again attempted this season,
but with tragic results, by a young lad from Sutherland, named Mackay,
who had previously approved his skill as a cragsman in his native
county, and several times secured the reward given by an Agricultural
Society for the destruction of young birds of prey. As the incident was
related to me, he had approached the nest by the path which I had
selected; he had paused where I had paused, and even for a longer time;
and then, venturing forward, he no sooner committed himself to the
treacherous chlorite, than, losing footing as if on a steep sheet of
ice, he shot right over the precipice. Falling sheer for the first fifty
feet or so without touching the rock, he was then turned full round by a
protuberance against which he had glanced, and, descending for the lower
half of the way head foremost, and dashing with tremendous force among
the smooth sea-stones below, his brains were scattered over an area of
from ten to twelve square yards in extent. His only companion--an
ignorant Irish lad--had to gather up the fragments of his head in a
napkin.

I now felt that, save for the gleam of the sun on the glistening
chlorite--seen not a moment too soon--I should probably have been
substituted as the victim for poor Mackay, and that he, warned by my
fate, would in all likelihood have escaped. And though I knew it might
be asked, Why the interposition of a Providence to save _you_, when he
was left to perish? I _did_ feel that I did