I don't know, though.
As he said to me, they would have been falling out with the mine men, and they seemed a ragged, drunken-looking set.

Glad he sent them about their business." All this, suggested by the possibility of losing his sword, just when he was upon an enemy's land; but he had not stopped on the top to think, for after lying down upon his breast, to gaze down and select the best place for his descent, he turned as he mused, lowered his legs, and began to descend, finding that after all his sword was not much in his way.
It was no new thing to Mark Eden to climb about the limestone cliffs, which formed one side of the Gleame, sometimes sloping down gradually, at others perpendicular, and in some cases partly overhanging, though in the latter case, it meant only for a few winters before, after being well saturated, the frost split them, piece by piece, till they went thundering down among the trees, generally to bound right into the river bed.
But, sloping or perpendicular, the formation was nearly always the same, stratum after stratum of from one to three feet in thickness, lying one upon the other, and riven into blocks which looked as if they had been laid by giant masons, to form a monstrous wall.

Consequently, between the strata and their upright dividing cracks, there were plenty of places where a bold climber could find foot and hand-hold, without counting upon roots of trees, wiry shrubs, and tough herbs, to hold on by when other objects failed.
So easily enough, down went Mark, humming his tune again, and changing the humming to singing about the three ravens sitting on a tree, though in this instance, excepting the young in the nest below, there were only two, and instead of sitting, they were sailing round and round, croaking and barking angrily, the cock bird, if it was not the hen, making a pretence every now and then, to dart down and strike at the would-be marauder, who was descending to their home.
But Mark lowered himself steadily enough, laughing at the angry birds, and listening for the first cries of their young, as he wondered how big they would be.
He soon found that appearances were deceitful, upon a great height like that, for instead of the bush which hid the nest, being forty feet from the cliff brow, it was a good sixty, and the climbing was not so good as he had anticipated.

The limestone crumbled away here and there; tufts of tough grass came out by the roots, and the stunted stems of bushes were not plentiful enough for hand-hold.

But whenever the lad found the place too difficult, he edged off to right or left, and found an easier spot from which he lowered himself, and edged his way back along the joining of the next row of blocks.
To any one gazing from the opposite side, his appearance, flattened against the cliff, would have seemed appalling, but to Mark Eden it was a mere nothing; he was descending the old cliff, and trying to find the easiest way, that was all.