Then it was lowered again; and as Mark strained his eyes round into the left corners to get a glimpse, he saw a loop swinging to and fro, and it struck him again and again; but those who lowered it, in the hope of noosing the lad and drawing him up, soon found that the bush and the sufferer's position precluded this.
"Can you push your arms through the loop, and hang on ?" cried Ralph now.
"No," was the discouraging reply, for Mark fully realised the fact that if he loosened his desperate hold for a moment he must fall.
"Haul up!" shouted Ralph.

"Quick!" The rope rattled and scraped again; and then, as Mark hung there, half-insensible, he heard what sounded like quarrelling.
"You shan't go, Master Ralph.

Who's to meet Sir Morton if you get a fall trying to save a thing like that ?" Even in his half-insensible state Mark felt a quiver run through him; and then he lay listening again, as if to hear what was taking place about some one else.
"Silence!" came to his ear.

"How dare you, sir! Now, all of you lower me down." There was a rustling and scraping directly after, which seemed to last a long time, before something brushed against the listener, and he quivered, for he felt that he was going.

Then there was a panting noise, which came up, as it were, out of the darkness, and he was clutched tightly, hot breath came upon his cheek, and a hoarse voice yelled in his ear,-- "Got him! Haul up steadily!" and directly after, the voice became a whisper, which said,-- "Pray God the rope may not break." Mark was conscious now of being scraped against the rock, and brushed by twigs, for what seemed to be a very long time, before he was roughly seized by more hands, and dragged heavily over the cliff edge, to be dropped upon the short grass, as a voice he had heard before cried harshly,-- "You've done it now, Master Ralph, and got your wolf cub after all." "Yes," panted Ralph hoarsely, as Mark felt as if a cloud had suddenly rolled away from his sight, and he saw clearly that half-a-dozen men were surrounding him, and Ralph Darley, his greatest enemy, was kneeling at his side, saying softly,-- "Yes, I've got the wolf cub after all;" and then the two lads' eyes met, and gazed deeply into each other's in a curious stare.
That stare had the same effect on both lads--that of making them feel uncomfortable.
Mark Eden, as he recovered from the shock of being so near a terrible ending to his young life, felt that, surrounded as he was by enemies, he ought to spring to his feet, draw his sword, and defend himself to the last; while Ralph Darley knew that, according to all old family traditions, he ought to order his men to seize a hand and foot each, give his young enemy two or three swings, and launch him headlong off the mighty cliff, and then stand and laugh at the capers he would cut in his fall.
For people had been very savage in their revenges out in that wild part of England, shut away from the civilisation of the time by moor and mountain.