boys and girls, turned out, when you came to inquire, to be familiar with the later legends of the pool, and, as David presently discovered, with one or more tales — for the stories were discrepant of 'Lias Dawson's meeting with the witch, now fifteen years ago. 'What had 'Lias seen? What would they see?' His flesh crept deliciously. 'Wal, owd Mermaid!' shouted Louie, defiantly, as soon as she had got her breath again. 'Are yo coomin out to-night? Yo'll ha coompany if yo do.' David smiled contemptuously and did not condescend to argue. 'Are yo coomin on?' he said, shouldering his box and bundle again. 'They'st be up after us if we doan't look out.' And on they went, climbing a steep boulder-strewn slope above the pool till they came to the 'edge' itself, a tossed and broken battlement of stone, running along the top of the Scout. Here the great black slabs of grit were lying fantastically piled upon each other at every angle and in every possible combination. The path which leads from the Hayfield side across the desolate tableland of the Scout to the Snake Inn on the eastern side of the ridge ran among them, and many a wayfarer, benighted or mist-bound on the moor, had taken refuge before now in their caverns and recesses, waiting for the light, and dreading to find himself on the cliffs of the Downfall. But David pushed on past many hiding-places well known to him, till the two reached the point where the mountain face sweeps backward in the curve of which the Downfall makes the centre. At the out |