eavily to the earth. Little Dan darted into the
bush, and fled home.

Rising slowly, McCoy looked half-stunned at first, but speedily
recovering himself, staggered on till he reached the hut, when he wildly
seized the bottle from its shelf, and put it to his lips, which were
bleeding from the fall, and covered with dust.

"Ha ha!" he shouted, while the light of delirium rekindled in his eyes,
"this is the grand cure for everything. My own son's afraid o' me now,
but who cares? What's that to Bill McCoy! an' his mother's ill too--
ha!--"

He checked himself in the middle of a fierce laugh, and stared before
him as if horror-stricken.

"No, no!" he gasped. "I--I didn't. Oh! God be merciful to me!"

Again he stopped, raised both hands high above his head, uttered a wild
laugh which terminated in a prolonged yell, as he dashed the bottle on
the floor, and darted from the hut.

All the strength and vigour which the wretched man had squandered seemed
to come back to him in that hour. The swiftness of youth returned to
his limbs. He ran down the path by which he had just come, and passed
Quintal on the way.

"Hallo, Bill! you're pretty bad to-night," said his comrade, looking
after him. He then followed at a smart run, as if some new idea had
suddenly occurred to him. Two of the women met McCoy further down, but
as if to evade them, he darted away to the right along the track leading
to the eastward cliffs. The women joined Quintal in pursuit, but before
they came near him, they saw him rush to the highest part of the cliffs
and leap up into the air, turning completely over as he vanished from
their sight.

At that spot the cliff appeared to overhang its base, and was several
hundred feet high. Far down there was a projecting rock, where
sea-gulls clustered in great numbers. McCoy, like the lightning-flash,
came in contact with the rock, and was dashed violently out into space,
while the affrighted sea-birds fled shrieking from the spot. Next
moment the man's mangled body cleft the dark water like an arrow,
leaving only a little spot of foam behind to mark for a few seconds his
watery grave.

It might have been thought that this terrible event would have had a
sobering effect upon Matthew Quintal, but instead of that it made him
worse. The death of his wife, too, by a fall from the cliffs about the
same time, seemed only to have the effect of rendering him more savage;
insomuch that he became a terro