the edge and looked down at the beach. Greatly to his surprise, a girl sat there, painting. She had rigged a big Japanese umbrella to shield herself and her easel from the sun. Its green-hued paper cover, gay with pink dragons and blue butterflies, brought a startling note of color into the placid foreground. The girl, or young woman, wore a very smart hat, but her dress was a grayish brown costume, sufficiently indeterminate in tint to conceal the stains of rough usage in climbing over rocks, or forcing a way through rank vegetation. Indeed, it was chosen, in the first instance, so that a dropped brush or a blob of paint would not show too vivid traces; and this was well, for some telepathic action caused the wearer to lift her eyes to the cliff the very instant after Rupert's figure broke the sky-line above the long grasses nodding on the verge. The result was lamentable. She squeezed half a tube of crimson lake over her skirt in a movement of surprise at the apparition.
She was annoyed, and, of course, blamed the man.
"What do you want?" she demanded. "Why creep up in that stealthy fashion?"
"I didn't," said Rupert.
"But you did." This with a pout, while she scraped the paint off her dress with a palette knife.
"I am very sorry that you should have cause to think so," he said. "Will you allow me to explain——"
As he stepped forward, lifting his hat, the girl cried a warning, but too late; a square yard of dry earth crumbled into dust beneath him, and he fell headlong. Luckily, the strata of shale and marl which formed the coast-line at that point had been scooped by the sea into a concavity, with a ledge, which Rupert reached before he had dropped half-way. Some experience of Alpine climbing had made him quick to decide how best to rectify a slip, and he endeavored now to spring rather than roll downward to the beach, since he had a fleeting vision of a row of black rocks that guarded the foot of the treacherous cliff. He just managed to clear an ugly boulder that would have taken cruel toll of bruised skin, if no worse, had he struck it, but he landed on a smooth rock coated with seaweed. Exactly what next befell neither he nor the girl ever knew. He performed some wild gyration, and was brought up forcibly by the bamboo shaft of the umbrella, to which he found himself clinging in a sitting posture. His trousers were split across both knees, his coat was ripped open under the left arm, and he felt badly bruised; nevertheless, he looked up into the girl's frightened face, and laughed, on which the fright vanished from her eyes, and she, too, laughed, with such ready merriment and display of white teeth, that Rupert laughed again. He picked himself up and stretched his arms slowly, for something had given him a tremendous thump in the ribs.
"Are you hurt?" cried the girl, anxiety again chasing the mirth from her expressive features.
"No," he said, after a deep breath had convinced him that no bones were broken. "I only wished to explain that your word 'stealthy' was undeserved."
"I withdraw it, then.... I saw you were a stranger, so it is my fault that you fell. I ought to have told you about that dangerous cliff instead of pitching into you because you startled me."
"I can't agree with you there," smiled Rupert. "We were both taken by surprise, but I might have known better than to stand so near the edge. Good job I was not a mile farther west," and he nodded in the direction of the distant headland.
"Oh, please don't think of it, or I shall dream to-night of somebody falling over the Tor."
"Is that the Tor?" he asked.
"Yes; don't you know? You are visiting Tormouth, I suppose?"
"I have been here since the day before yesterday, but my local knowledge is nil."
"Well, if I were you, I should go home and change my clothes. How did your coat get torn? Are you sure you are not injured?"
He turned to survey the rock on which his feet had slipped. Between it and the umbrella the top of a buried boulder showed through the deep sand, ever white and soft at highwater mark.
"I am inclined to believe that I butted into that fellow during the hurricane," he said. Then, feeling that an excuse must be forthcoming, if he wished to hear more of this girl's voice, and look for a little while longer into her face, he threw a plaintive note into a request.
"Would you mind if I sat down for a minute or so?" he asked. "I feel a bit shaken. After the briefest sort of rest I shall be off to the Swan."
"Sit down at once," she said with ready sympathy. "Here, take this," and she made to give him the canvas chair from which she had risen at the first alarm.
He dropped to the sand with suspicious ease.
"I shall be quite comfortable here," he said. "Please go on with your painting. I always find it soothing to watch an artist at work."
"I must be going home now," she answered. "I obtain this effect only at a certain stage of tide, and early in the day. You see, the Tor changes his appearance so rapidly when the sun travels round to the south."
"Do you live at Tormouth?" he ventured to ask.
"Half a mile out."
"Will you allow me to carry something for you? I find that I have broken two ribs—of your umbrella," he added instantly, seeing that those radiant eyes of hers had turned on him with quick solicitude.
"Pity," she murmured, "bamboo is so much harder to mend than bone. No—you will not carry anything. I think, if you are staying at the Swan, you will find a path up a little hollow in the cliff about a hundred yards from here."
"Yes, and if you, too, are going——"
"In the opposite direction."
"Ah, well," he said, "I am a useless person, it seems. Good-by. May I fall at your feet again to-morrow?"
The absurd question brought half a smile to her lips. She began to reply: "Worship so headlong——"
Then she saw that which caused her face to blanch.
"Why, your right hand is smothered in blood—something has happened——"
He glanced at his hand, which a pebble had cut on one of the knuckles; and he valiantly resisted the temptation that presented itself, and stood upright.
"It is a mere scratch," he assured her. "If I wash it in salt water it will be healed before I reach Tormouth. Good-by—mermaid. I believe you live in a cavern—out there—beneath the Tor. Some day soon I shall swim out among the rocks and look for you."
With that he stooped to recover his hat, walked seaward to find a pool, and held his hand in the water until the wound was cauterized. Then he lit another cigar, and saw out of the tail of his eye that the girl was now on the top of the cliff at some distance to the west.
"I wonder who she is," he murmured. "A lady, at any rate, and a very charming one."
And the girl was saying:
"Who is he?—A gentleman, I see. American? Something in the accent, perhaps. Or perhaps not. Americans don't come to torpid old Tormouth."
CHAPTER V
THE MISSING BLADE
