him hurtling to the bottom of the gorge, he moved more cautiously,
stepping down with infinite pains until he reached the brook, which he
crossed carefully, and then moved back up the declivity toward the
castle.

The night was clear, starlit but moonless, and the cliff as he reached
it looked down upon him with majestic and sullen disdain. The ages had
passed over and left it scarred and seared but still defiant and
inaccessible. Renwick paused a moment to be sure of his ground and then
boldly crawled up over the chaos of tumbled bowlders and broken masonry,
until he reached the wall of solid rock, where he stopped again to
regain his breath and examine the fissure that he had studied earlier in
the day. It was a cleft in the rock, the result of some subterranean
upheaval which had caused the whole crag to settle into its base; a
fissure, originally a mere crack which had been widened and deepened by
the erosion of time. Upon closer inspection, it was larger than it had
appeared from below, perhaps ten feet in width at the outside, and
tapering gradually as it rose.

He entered and ran his fingers along its sides, penetrating to its full
depth until there was just room enough in which to wedge his bent body.
Then rising cautiously, seated, so to speak, upon the incline which
seemed to be about thirty degrees from the vertical, he dug the
iron-shod toes of his peasant's boots into the roughnesses of the wall
before him and rose, pushing with elbows and arms where the wall was too
smooth for a foothold. It was hard work, and at the end of ten minutes,
perspiring profusely, and leg and arm weary, he stopped upon a
projecting ledge, where he found a perfect balance for his entire body,
and relaxed. But he had gained fifty feet.

Above him was the long streak of pallid light shimmering against the
gloom of the rock like the blade of a naked sword, with its point far
above him among the stars. For a full five minutes he rested, and then
went upward again, feeling with his finger ends while he braced his
body, taking advantage of every foothold before and behind. At one spot
the fissure widened dangerously, but he struggled inward; at another it
went almost straight upward, requiring sheer strength of fingers; but at
last he found another ledge and braced himself with his feet for another
rest. He did not dare to look downward now, for fear of dizziness, but
he knew that he had already come high. The sword blade was shorte