As he did so he noticed the Mermaid's Pool, gleaming in a pale ray of moonlight, some two hundred feet below.

A sudden alarm seized him, lest Reuben should be caught by it, put two and two together and understand.
But Reuben was absorbed in a discomfort, half moral, half superstitious, and nothing else reached the slow brain--which was besides preoccupied by Jim Wigson's suggestion.

After a bit he picked up his stick and went on again.

David, eagerly watching, tracked him along the path which follows the ridge, and saw the light pause once more close to the Downfall.
So far as the boy could see, his uncle made a long stay at a point beyond the stream, the bed of which was just discernible, as a sort of paler streak on the darkness.
'Why, that's about whar th' Edale path cooms in,' thought David, wondering.

'What ud he think we'd be doin theer ?' Faint sounds came to him in a lull of the wind, as though Reuben were shouting again--shouting many times.