ront of him.
The sea, though comparatively placid, could as usual be heard from this
point along the whole distance between promontories to the right and
left, floundering and entangling itself among the insulated stacks of
rock which dotted the water's edge--the miserable skeletons of tortured
old cliffs that would not even yet succumb to the wear and tear of the
tides.

As a change from thoughts not of a very cheerful kind, Knight attempted
exertion. He stood up, and prepared to ascend to the summit of
the ruinous heap of stones, from which a more extended outlook was
obtainable than from the ground. He stretched out his arm to seize the
projecting arris of a larger block than ordinary, and so help himself
up, when his hand lighted plump upon a substance differing in the
greatest possible degree from what he had expected to seize--hard stone.
It was stringy and entangled, and trailed upon the stone. The
deep shadow from the aisle wall prevented his seeing anything here
distinctly, and he began guessing as a necessity. 'It is a tressy
species of moss or lichen,' he said to himself.

But it lay loosely over the stone.

'It is a tuft of grass,' he said.

But it lacked the roughness and humidity of the finest grass.

'It is a mason's whitewash-brush.'

Such brushes, he remembered, were more bristly; and however much used in
repairing a structure, would not be required in pulling one down.

He said, 'It must be a thready silk fringe.'

He felt further in. It was somewhat warm. Knight instantly felt somewhat
cold.

To find the coldness of inanimate matter where you expect warmth is
startling enough; but a colder temperature than that of the body being
rather the rule than the exception in common substances, it hardly
conveys such a shock to the system as finding warmth where utter
frigidity is anticipated.

'God only knows what it is,' he said.

He felt further, and in the course of a minute put his hand upon a human
head. The head was warm, but motionless. The thready mass was the hair
of the head--long and straggling, showing that the head was a woman's.

Knight in his perplexity stood still for a moment, and collected his
thoughts. The vicar's account of the fall of the tower was that the
workmen had been undermining it all the day, and had left in the evening
intending to give the finishing stroke the next morning. Half an hour
after they had gone the undermined angle came down. The woman who was
half bu