Presently the turf ceased.  Dismounting, I ran to the edge and plunged down the rocky face.  I had descended about twenty feet, when I came to the spot where, by craning forward, I could catch sight of the spit of rock, and the Quick-Boy Sand to the right of it.

The sun—­a blazing ball of red—­was just now setting behind us, and its level rays fell full upon the man we were chasing.  He stood on the very edge of the rocks, a black spot against the luminous yellow of sea and sand.  He seemed to be meditating.  His back was towards us, and he perceived neither his pursuers above nor the heads that at this moment appeared over the ridge behind him, and not fifteen yards away.  The party on the beach had dismounted and were clambering up stealthily.  Five seconds more and they could spring upon him.

But they under-estimated a madman’s instinct.  As if for no reason, he gave a quick start, turned, and at the same instant was aware of both attacking parties.  A last gleam of sunlight fell on the snuff-box in his left hand; his right thumb and fore-finger hung arrested, grasping the pinch.  For fully half a minute nothing happened; hunters and hunted eyed each other and waited.  Then carrying the snuff to his nose, and doffing his hat, with a satirical sweep of the hand and a low bow, he turned again and tripped off the ledge into the jaws of the Quick-Boy.

There was no help now.  At his third step the sand had him by the ankles.  For a moment he fought it, then, throwing up his arms, sank forward, slowly and as if bowing yet, upon his face.  Second by second we stood and watched him disappear.  Within five minutes the ripples of the Quick-Boy Sand met once more above him.

In the course of the next afternoon the Vicar of Bleakirk called at the Hall with a paper which he had found pinned to the church door.  It was evidently a scrap torn from an old letter, and bore, scribbled in pencil by a clerkly hand, these words:  “The young Squire Cartwright in straits by the foot-bridge, six miles toward Netherkirk. Orate pro anima Guliemli Teague.”

II.—­THE CONSTANT POST-BOY.

It was a stifling August afternoon.  Not a breath of wind came over the downs, and the sky was just a great flaming oven inverted over them.  I sat down under a dusty gorse-bush (no tree could be seen) beside the high-road, and tugging off a boot, searched for a prickle that somehow had got into it.  Then, finding myself too hot to pull the boot on again, I turned out some crumbs of tobacco from a waistcoat pocket, lit my pipe, and unbuckled my pack.