with the skull and, leaving it where he found it, he made along the rocks towards the spot where the precipice rises almost sheer from the tarn, and began to scour the face of the cliff. He seemed as surefooted as a marten, and never once slipped or stumbled as he dropped from shelf to shelf whose scanty width in places all but denied foothold. Three times he made the descent, leaping from ledge to ledge like the overflow rushing down the hillside; but, unlike the stream, he leaped in silence, save for the muffled thud of his spongy feet as they struck the rock on landing. The last time he dived, rose at the end of a long swim by the boulder flanking the outlet, climbed to the top, and lay down at full length. The water ran from his unshaken coat, leaving it smooth and refulgent in the moonlight, as he reposed there gazing at the windings of the river on the plain below. Soon however the restless creature rose and plunged again into the tarn, where he gambolled, partly on the surface, but chiefly beneath amongst the currents that well up from the unfathomed depths. And so the hours sped till, when the moon had set and the stars wellnigh paled, he gave over disporting himself and swam towards his lair. On the way thither, forgetting
