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and depths where he heard the waves murmur.
He stretched his little thin arms and yawned.
Then suddenly, as one who makes up his mind, bold, and throwing off his
numbness--with the agility of a squirrel, or perhaps of an acrobat--he
turned his back on the creek, and set himself to climb up the cliff. He
escaladed the path, left it, returned to it, quick and venturous. He was
hurrying landward, just as though he had a destination marked out;
nevertheless he was going nowhere.
He hastened without an object--a fugitive before Fate.
To climb is the function of a man; to clamber is that of an animal--he
did both. As the slopes of Portland face southward, there was scarcely
any snow on the path; the intensity of cold had, however, frozen that
snow into dust very troublesome to the walker. The child freed himself
of it. His man's jacket, which was too big for him, complicated matters,
and got in his way. Now and then on an overhanging crag or in a
declivity he came upon a little ice, which caused him to slip down.
Then, after hanging some moments over the precipice, he would catch
hold of a dry branch or projecting stone. Once he came on a vein of
slate, which suddenly gave way under him, letting him down with it.
Crumbling slate is treacherous. For some seconds the child slid like a
tile on a roof; he rolled to the extreme edge of the decline; a tuft of
grass which he clutched at the right moment saved him. He was as mute in
sight of the abyss as he had been in sight of the men; he gathered
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