“Over the cliff?” he said, whispering, and I nodded.

“Go and look,” he gasped, and he knelt down and took Elfrida from me.

The two who were with him were trying to catch the loose horses, and we were alone for the moment.  So I crept to the edge and looked over, fearing what I should see.  But I saw nothing but the bare track winding there, and I remembered that the cliff overhung.

Then, as I scanned every rock and cranny below me a man came out from under the overhang at the foot of the cliff and looked up.  For a moment my heart leapt, for I thought it was Erpwald.  But it was only the traveller we had seen, and he must have been looking at what had rolled into the hollow that hid it from me.  He glanced up and caught sight of me.

“How did it happen?” he called up to me.

“Dead?” I called back, with a terror of what I knew would be his answer.

Then he laughed at me.

“Do you expect a horse to be leather all through, Master?  Of course he is.—­Saddle and all smashed to bits.”

Then a dull anger took me that he thought of the horse only, as it seemed, unless he was mazed as I was with it all.

“The man—­the man,” I said.

“There is no man here, Master.  Did one fall?” he said in a new voice, and he crossed to the other side of the gorge and scanned the face of the cliff.

“He is not to be seen,” he said.  “Maybe he has caught yonder.”

He pointed to a ledge that was plain enough to me, but nowhere near the place whence the fall was.  There were no ledges to be seen as I looked straight down, and I knew that this place was the most sheer fall along all the length of the gorge.

Now three more of our party came up, and at once they rode down to the village and so round to where the man stood.  It seemed a long time before they were there and talking to him.

“Ho, Oswald!”

Their voices came cheerfully enough, and I looked down at them.

“There seem to be clefts here and there, and in one of those he must needs be,” they said.  “We are going to the village to get a cragsman with a rope, and will be with you anon.”

There was at least hope in that, and I watched them ride swiftly away.  The ravens were gathering fast now, knowing that what fell from above must needs be their prey, and two great eagles were wheeling high overhead, waiting.  I heard the kites screaming to one another from above the eagles, and from the woods came the call of the buzzards.  They knew more than I.

Now the ealdorman could not bring Elfrida round, and he thought it best to take her hence.  So he had her lifted to him on his horse, and went slowly and carefully down the hill toward the village with her.  I had told him all that had happened by this time, and I was to bring word presently to him of how the search went.

So I and those two friends who had first come sat there on the cliff top waiting in silence for the coming of the man with his ropes.  All that could be said had been said.