s long-continued and hopeless
melancholy, yet quite incapable of making the one strong effort which
would have enabled him to throw it off. And in this mood he sat down
near the cliff, thinking of nothing, but watching, with idle guesses as
to their destination and history, the few vessels that passed by on the
horizon. The evening was drawing-in, cold and windy; and suddenly
remembering that he must be back by tea-time, he rose up to return. The
motion displaced his straw hat, and the next moment the breeze had
carried it a little way over the edge of the cliff, where it was caught
in a low bush of tamarisk. It rested but a few feet below him, and the
chalky front of the cliff was sufficiently rough to admit of his
descent. He climbed to it, and had just succeeded in disengaging it
with his foot, when before he had time to seize it, it again fell, and
rolled down some thirty feet. Kenrick, finding that he had been able to
get down with tolerable ease, determined to continue his descent in
order to secure it. It never occurred to him that the hat was of no
great importance, and that it would have been infinitely less trouble to
walk home without it, and buy a new one, than to run the risk and
encounter the trouble of his climb. However, he _did_ manage to reach
it, and put it on with some satisfaction, when, as he was beginning to
remount, a considerable mass of chalk crumbled away under his feet, and
made him cling on with both hands to avoid being precipitated. He had
been able to get down well enough, because, if the chalk slipped, he
glided on safely with it, but in climbing up he was obliged to press his
feet strongly downwards in order to gain his spring; and every time he
did this, he found that the chalk kept giving way, exhausting him with
futile efforts, filling his shoes with dust and pebbles, slipping into
his clothes, and blinding his eyes. Every person who has climbed at
all, whether in the Alps or elsewhere, knows that it is easy enough to
get down places which it is almost impossible to mount again; and
Kenrick, after many attempts, found that he had been most imprudent, and
becoming seriously alarmed, was forced, when he had quite tired himself
with fruitless exertions and had once or twice nearly fallen, to give up
the attempt altogether, and do his best to secure another way of escape.

This was to climb down quite to the bottom of the cliff, and make his
way, as best he could, over rocks and