Do not look down. I must be five
minutes gone--not more."
She was up, and with the gate-key in her hand, ere she had done
speaking. Great Heaven! would that door never open? How her trembling
hands missed the keyhole; and when the key was in, how the rusty wards
opposed its turning. Then when the door was opened, it seemed as though
the winds had husbanded their strength behind it for one wild sortie,
with such fury did they rush out to beat her back. But she struggled in
somehow, and on across the howling waste of clifftop to a little hut of
stone, which formed the covering of a well. There, as she expected, she
found a rope coiled up, which was used to draw up water in an iron cup,
to gratify the curiosity of visitors as much as to quench their thirst;
for it was strange, indeed, to meet with fresh water there, the presence
of which, no doubt, had caused the place to be chosen for a fastness in
old time. With this she hurried back; and fixing one end firmly round
the door-post, she looped the other in a slip-knot, and lowered it
carefully to Richard. "Put this beneath your arms," she said; "the rope
is strong and firmly fastened. You must climb up by it, hand over hand."
It was not so easy a task for the young artist as for a Gethin man; but
he was strong and active; and where his chief difficulty lay, which was
at the clifftop, the girl's willing arms assisted him.
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