the summit of the column was by climbing a scraggly oak tree which grew on the high ground back of the pillar, crawling out on an overhanging limb, and then dropping down to the platform below.  It was in this oak that we decided to build our house.  It was a very inaccessible spot, and to reach it we had to make a wide detour around the back of the hill, and through the fields of a cranky farmer, who more than once threatened to fill us with bird shot for trespassing on his property.  How were we to carry all our building materials up to this great height?  One would think that the difficulties would be enough to discourage us, but not so with the S. S. I. E. E. of W. C. 1.  Nothing daunted us.

Dutchy Takes a Dare.

Our first task was to try some other approach to the top of the cliff.  At one side of the overhanging ledge there was a fissure in the rocks which ran from the base of the pillar to the foot of the cliff.  Down this zigzag crevice Dutchy had scrambled, one afternoon, on a dare.  We were rather frightened when he started, because it was a very hazardous undertaking, and we watched him anxiously, peering over the edge of the precipice.  By bracing his back against one of the walls of the rock, and digging his feet into the niches and chinks of the opposite wall, he safely made his way to a shelf about half-way down, where he paused to rest.  From that point on the fissure widened out, and a steep, almost vertical incline, sparsely covered with vegetation, led to the railroad track below.  I think he must have become rather frightened at his position, because he hesitated long before he resumed his downward course, and when he finally did make the attempt his foot slipped upon the moss-covered rocks and down he fell, scratching and clawing at every shrub within reach.  Believing him to be killed, we rushed down the hill and around to the foot of the cliff.  It probably took us about fifteen or twenty minutes, though it seemed ages before we came upon our venturesome comrade coolly trying to pin together a rent of inconvenient location and dimensions in his trousers.

“Say, Dutchy, are you killed?” cried Bill, breathlessly.

“Killed, nothing,” he replied, with scorn.  “I suppose you fellows think I had a fall.  Well, I didn’t.”

“You didn’t, eh?  We saw you slip.”

“Oh, go on.  I came down that way on purpose.  There was no use in picking my way down like a ’fraid cat, when I could just as well take a smooth and easy toboggan slide on the bushes all the way down.”

Smooth and easy toboggan slide!  Well, you should have seen the hillside.  The course was well defined by the torn and uprooted shrubs and the pile of branches and vines at Dutchy’s feet.  Whether the hare-brained Dutchy really imagined he could glide easily down on the shrubbery, his frantic movements on the way certainly belied his story, and when, the next day, we proposed that he repeat the trick, somehow he didn’t seem to be very enthusiastic on the subject.