He waited till all was still again, then crept, cat-like, along the rock-foot, and hit, at length, the track up which a while before had fled Killer and victim. Up that ragged way he crawled on hands and knees. The perspiration rolled off his face; one elbow brushed the rock perpetually; one hand plunged ever and anon into that naked emptiness on the other side.
He prayed that the moon might keep in but a little longer; that his feet might be saved from falling, where a slip might well mean death, certain destruction to any chance of success. He cursed his luck that Th' Owd Un had somehow missed him in the dark; for now he must trust to chance, his own great strength, and his good oak stick. And as he climbed, he laid his plan: to rush in on the Killer as he still gorged and grapple with him. If in the darkness he missed--and in that narrow arena the contingency was improbable--the murderer might still, in the panic of the moment, forget the one path to safety and leap over the Fall to his destruction.
At length he reached the summit and paused to draw breath. The black void before him was the Scoop, and in its bosom--not ten yards away--must be lying the Killer and the killed.
He crouched against the wet rock-face and listened. In that dark silence, poised 'twixt heaven and earth, he seemed a million miles apart from living soul.
No sound, and yet the murderer must be there. Ay, there was the tinkle of a dislodged stone; and again, the tread of stealthy feet.
He rose to his full height; gathered himself, and leapt.
Something collided with him as he sprang; something wrestled madly with him; something wrenched from beneath him; and in a clap he heard the thud of a body striking ground far below, and the slithering and splattering of some creature speeding furiously down the hill-side and away.
"What the devil?" screamed a little voice.
And there they were still struggling over the body of a dead sheep.
In a second they had disengaged and rushed to the edge of the Fall. In the quiet they could still hear the scrambling hurry of the fugitive far below them. Nothing was to be seen, however, save an array of startled sheep on the hill-side, mute witnesses of the murderer's escape.