t, then, Master Karl? Do you design to make a ladder that will be
taller than all we have ever seen--tall enough to reach to the top of a
precipice three hundred feet high? We know you have both energy and
perseverance; and, after witnessing the way that you worked at the
building of your bridge, and the skill with which you built it, we are
ready to believe that you can accomplish a very great feat in the
joiner's line; but that _you_ can make a ladder three hundred feet in
length, we are not prepared to believe--not if you had a whole chest of
tools and the best timber in the world. We know you might put a ladder
together ever so long, but would it hold together? or even if it did,
how could you set it up against the cliff? Never. Three of the
strongest men could not do it,--nor six neither,--nor a dozen, without
machinery to assist them; therefore scaling the cliff by means of a
wooden ladder is plainly impracticable; and if that be your idea, you
may as well abandon it."

"Quite true, I know all this as well as you," would have been Karl's
reply; "but I had no idea of being able to scale the cliff by means of a
ladder. It was not of _a ladder_, but of _ladders_, I was thinking."

"Ha! there may be something in that."

Karl knew well enough that no single ladder could be made of sufficient
length and strength to have reached from the bottom to the top of that
great wall; or if such could be constructed, he knew equally well that
it would be impossible to set it up.

But the idea that had been forming in his mind was, that several ladders
might effect the purpose--one placed above another, and each one resting
upon a _ledge of the cliff_, to which the one next below should enable
them to ascend.

In this idea there was really some shadow of practicability, though, as
I have said, it was but a very forlorn hope. The amount of its
practicableness depended upon the existence of the _ledges_; and it was
to ascertain this that Karl had set forth.

If such ledges could be found, the hope would no longer have been
forlorn. Karl believed that with time and energy the ladders might be
constructed, notwithstanding the poor stock of carpenter's tools at
their service; though he had scarce yet thought of how the holes were to
be made to receive the rounds, or how the ladders themselves might be
set upon the ledges, or any other detail of the plan. He was too eager
to be satisfied about the first and most important