his knowing why, several things, chiefly trivial, that had
happened during the last two years and that he had quite forgotten,
became vividly present to his mind. He was aroused at last by the sound
of a stone dislodged near by, which rattled down the mountain. In a
moment, on a steep, rocky slope opposite to him, he beheld a figure
cautiously descending--a figure which was not Roderick. It was
Singleton, who had seen him and began to beckon to him.

"Come down--come down!" cried the painter, steadily making his own way
down. Rowland saw that as he moved, and even as he selected his foothold
and watched his steps, he was looking at something at the bottom of the
cliff. This was a great rugged wall which had fallen backward from
the perpendicular, and the descent, though difficult, was with care
sufficiently practicable.

"What do you see?" cried Rowland.

Singleton stopped, looked across at him and seemed to hesitate; then,
"Come down--come down!" he simply repeated.

Rowland's course was also a steep descent, and he attacked it so
precipitately that he afterwards marveled he had not broken his neck.
It was a ten minutes' headlong scramble. Half-way down he saw something
that made him dizzy; he saw what Singleton had seen. In the gorge below
them a vague white mass lay tumbled upon the stones. He let himself go,
blindly, fiercely. Singleton had reached the rocky bottom of the ravine
before him, and had bounded forward and fallen upon his knees. Rowland
overtook him and his own legs collapsed. The thing that yesterday was
his friend lay before him as the chance of the last breath had left it,
and out of it Roderick's face stared upward, open-eyed, at the sky.

He had fallen from a great height, but he was singularly little
disfigured. The rain had spent its torrents upon him, and his clothes
and hair were as wet as if the billows of the ocean had flung him upon
the strand. An attempt to move him would show some hideous fracture,
some horrible physical dishonor; but what Rowland saw on first looking
at him was only a strangely serene expression of life. The eyes were
dead, but in a short time, when Rowland had closed them, the whole
face seemed to awake. The rain had washed away all blood; it was as if
Violence, having done her work, had stolen away in shame. Roderick's
face might have shamed her; it looked admirably handsome.

"He was a beautiful man!" said Singleton.

They looked up through their horror at the cl