Page:Joan, the curate.djvu/107

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An Ugly Customer.
101

had enough of it. He didn't hardly fare to seem to know whither he was going."

Tregenna went down towards the shore, trying to find some track which he might follow; but the mist and the darkness were creeping on together, and the traces of the conflict being on all sides, in trampled, blood-stained grass and roughened ground, he found nothing to guide his steps.

But when he got down to the beach he was more fortunate. He found footmarks and little red spots on the broken sandstone rocks, and, following these indications, he came round a jutting point of frowning cliff, to a cave, partly hollowed out by the action of the sea, and partly by human hands, the walls of which were green with the slime left by the tides.

Half in and half out of the cave, lying on the shingle and broken rocks, lay the body of the lad of whom he was in search.

It was with something like tenderness that Tregenna stooped, and, full of dread that his own blow had killed him, raised the lad from the ground, turning him, and looking into his white and livid face, with the half-dried blood making disfiguring patches on one side of it.