s; and first one and then another was
sent off with a little money and a haversack of food to seek his friends
and trouble the peaceful valley no more.

It took nearly the year before the last of the wretched crew bade
farewell to the place, grateful or ungrateful, according to his nature,
after going through a long course of physical suffering; and by that
time Cliff Castle was pretty well restored, and the two lads, after a
long absence, were back home again to the land of mighty cliff, green
forest, and purling stream.

It was on one of those glorious early summer mornings when the air seems
full of joy, and it is a delight even to exist, that, as the sycamores
and beeches in their early green were alive with song, there came a
rattle of tiny bits of spar against Mark Eden's casement window, and he
sprang out of bed to throw it open and look down upon Ralph Darley,
armed with lissom rod over his shoulder and creel on back.

"Oh, I say," he cried, "asleep, and on a morning like this!"

"Yes, but you're too soon."

"Soon? Why, I'm a quarter of an hour late. Be quick, the May-fly are
up, and the trout feeding like mad, and as for the grayling, I saw the
biggest--oh! do make haste."

"Shan't be long."

"And Mark, tell Mary that father is going to bring Min up about twelve,
and they are to meet us with the dinner-basket up by the alder weir.
Well, why don't you make haste and dress?"

"I was thinking," said Mark, with a broad smile.

"What about?"

"Oh, here's Dummy with the net," cried Mark. "Hi! you sir! why didn't
you come and call me at the proper time?"

"Morn', Master Ralph," said the lad, with a friendly grin. Then with an
ill-used look up at the window:

"'Tis proper time. You said six, and it aren't that yet."

"There," cried Mark; "you are too soon."

"Very well. It was so fine; but I say, what were you thinking about?"

Mark grinned again.

"Is it so very comic?" said Ralph impatiently.

"That depends on what you say."

"Well, let's hear."

"I was thinking that you and I have never finished that fight."

"No; you haven't been down to steal our ravens. I say, Mark, what do
you say? Shall we? They're building there again."

"Let 'em," said Mark, "in peace."

THE END.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Tor, by George Manville Fenn

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