what had become, as it seemed to
them, more and more a horrible maze, Dean made a snatch at his cousin's
arm as he slipped and fell, dragging Mark, till the lad checked his
descent by a desperate snatch at the trunk of a gnarled climber.

"Oh, I say," cried Mark, "don't say you are hurt!"

A low, half stifled gasp or two came from some distance down.

"Dean, old fellow! Here, I say, speak! Where are you?"

"Down here somewhere.--Ugh! It is black and cold."

"Well, climb up again. I am reaching down and holding out my hand.
Catch hold."

"I can't reach," came back, in a husky voice, "and I am afraid."

"Don't say afraid!" cried Mark angrily. "There's nothing to be afraid
of."

"I have hurt my ankle, Mark, and it gives way under me. Oh, why did we
come here!"

"Don't talk like that. Here, I'll get back out of this and go and fetch
father and the doctor and the others, and we will carry you back."

"No, no, Mark; I am sick and faint. Don't--pray don't go and leave me.
I am afraid I am a horrible coward, but if you leave me alone here in
this dreadful place, and like this, I don't think I could bear it."

"Oh, nonsense! You are only in a sort of split in the rocks. Be a man.
I must go for help; it's no use to shout."

"No, no," said Dean, in a hoarse whisper; "don't--pray don't shout."

"Well, I won't! but I must go and leave you for a bit."

"I can't bear it. You shan't go and leave me! There, I think my
ankle's better now, and it doesn't seem so dark. You can't be above
twenty feet above me; and that's nothing, is it?"

"No, nothing at all," replied Mark hoarsely.

"Then I am going to climb up."

"Yes, be careful, and--"

"Oh, Mark! Mark!"

His cousin's cry seemed to hiss strangely past the lad's ears. Then
there was a moment or two's silence and a horrible splash, followed by
the washing of water against the sides of the black chasm down which
Mark was straining his eyes to gaze, and then whisper after whisper,
soft and strange, until they died away.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

STRIKING A DAMP MATCH.

Mark Roche turned cold--not the cold of contact with ice, but what may
be termed in contradistinction to muscular cold, a mental freezing of
the nerves with horror. For how long a space of time he could not
afterwards have told, he stood bending over what he felt must be some
horrible depth down which his cousin had fallen, to be plunged into deep
water at the bottom. Every facul