nd, calling to Mike to try and hold on, he made a
quick snatch with one hand at the lad's leg a foot higher, but failed to
get a good grasp, his hand gliding down the leg, and Mike uttered a wild
cry.

For a moment Vince felt that he must fall, but in his desperation his
teeth closed on the cloth beneath him, checking his downward progress;
and as his feet scraped over the rock in his efforts to find fresh hold,
he found his cliff-climbing had borne its fruits by hardening the
muscles of his arms. How he hardly knew, he managed to get hand over
hand upon Mike's leg, till he drew himself above the ridge, and in his
last effort he fell over, dragging his companion with him, so that they
rolled together down the inner slope twenty or thirty feet, till a block
checked their progress.

Just then, as they lay scratched and panting, there was a darkening of
the air, the soft whishing of wings, and the raven dropped on the big
pinnacle close at hand, to utter its hoarse, barking croak as it gazed
wickedly at them with first one and then the other eye.

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Mike, in a peculiarly hysterical tone; "wouldn't
you like it? But not this time, old fellow. Oh, don't I wish I had a
stone!"

The same memory had come to both, as they lay breathless and exhausted,
of seeing this bird or one of its relatives rise from below the cliff
edge one day as they approached; and, looking down, they saw upon a
ledge, where it had fallen, a dead lamb, upon which the great ill-omened
bird had been making a meal.

"Hurt?" said Vince at last, as he sat up and examined his clothes for
tears.

"Hurt! why, of course I am. I gave my head such a whack against one of
the stones.--Are you?"

"No," said Vince, making an effort to laugh at the danger from which he
had escaped. "I say, though, your trousers are made of better cloth
than mine."

"Trousers!" said Mike sourly: "you've nearly torn the flesh off my
bones. You did get hold of a bit of skin with your teeth, only I
flinched and got it away. I say, though--"

"Well? What?" said Vince; for the other stopped. "That's the way down
to the Scraw; but you needn't have been in such a hurry to go."

Vince shuddered in spite of his self-control. "I wonder," he said
softly, "whether it's deep water underneath or rocks?"

"I don't know that it matters," was the reply. "If it had been water
you couldn't have swum in such a whirlpool as it seems to be. So you
might just as we