Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/557

 descending — a figure which was not Roderick's. It was Singleton's, who had seen him and begun to beckon.

"Come down — come down!" cried this companion, steadily making his own way down. Row land saw that as he moved, and even as he selected his foothold and watched his steps, he was looking at something at the bottom of the cliff. This was a great rugged wall that sloped backward from the perpendicular, and the descent, though difficult, was with care sufficiently practicable.

"What do you see?" Rowland managed to call.

Singleton stopped, looked across at him and seemed to hesitate; then, "Come down — come down!" he simply repeated.

Rowland's course was also precipitous, and he attacked it so dizzily that he marvelled, later on, he had not broken his neck. It was a ten minutes' headlong scramble. Half-way down he saw something that for a minute did make him reel; he saw what Singleton had seen. In the gorge below a vague white mass lay tumbled upon the stones. He let himself go, blindly, fiercely, to where Singleton, reaching the rocky bottom of the ravine first, had bounded forward and fallen upon his knees. Rowland overtook him, and his own legs gave way for horror. The thing that yesterday was his friend lay before him as the chance of the last breath had left it, and out of it Roderick's face stared open-eyed at the sky.

He had fallen from a great height, but he was singularly little disfigured. The rain had spent its 523