uld
only be giving himself up to insult, and perhaps serious injury, taken
at a disadvantage, as he felt that he must be; but calmly, and in the
most sure-footed way, sidled along, with the ledge getting more and more
narrow, but the hand-hold better.

In this way he passed the spot where he had lowered himself down, and
reached a slight angle, by which he expected, from long experience in
cliff-climbing, to be able to descend to the next.

He was quite right, and it proved to be easier than he had expected; but
a looker-on would have shuddered to see the way in which the lad clung
to the rough stones, where the slightest slip would have sent him down
headlong for at least three hundred feet before he touched anywhere, and
then bounded off again, a mere mass of shapeless flesh.

Mark knew of his danger, but it did not trouble him, for his brain was
too much occupied by the presence of young Darley; and as he descended
he felt a slight flush of pride in doing what he was certain his young
enemy dare not attempt.

In a moment or two he was standing safely--that is, so long as he held
on tightly with his fingers in the crack above--upon the next ledge, a
few inches wide, and his intention had been to go on in the same
direction, so as to be farther from his watchers; but he was not long in
finding that this was impossible, and he had to go back till he was well
beneath Ralph Darley, and saw that he must go farther still before he
attempted to descend to the next rest for his feet.

"It will take a long time to get down like this," he thought; "and
perhaps he'll send below to meet me at the bottom. Perhaps that is what
he has already done. But never mind; I shall have done as I liked, and
not obeyed his insolent orders. Let him see, too, that I'm quite at
home on the rocks, and can do as I like. Wonder whether I shall get
Master Rayburn's egg down safely! Not if they throw a stone down upon
my head.--Now for it."

He had reached another comparatively easy place for descending from the
course of blocks on which he stood, when he suddenly found himself
embarrassed, not by the egg, but by the young birds, which nearly upset
his equilibrium by beginning all at once to struggle and flap vigorously
with their half-fledged wings.

The lad's first impulse, as he clung to the ledge, was to tear the birds
from his belt and throw them down; but his spirit revolted from the
cruelty of the proceeding, and his vanity helped