Without an instant's hesitation she swung herself up the steep
incline, climbing with a rapidity that swiftly cut off the landward
line of retreat. She would give her assailant a fright for his pains
if nothing better.
And then just as she reached the level, very sharply she stopped. It was
as if a hand had caught her back. For suddenly there rose up before her a
figure so strange that for a moment she felt almost like a scared child.
It sprang from the bushes and stood facing her like an animal at bay--a
short creature neither man nor boy, misshapen, grotesquely humped,
possessing long thin arms of almost baboon-like proportions. The head
was sunken into the shoulders. It was flung back and the face
upraised--and it was the face that made her pause, for it was the most
pathetic sight she had ever looked upon. It was the face of a lad of two
or three and twenty, but drawn in lines so painful, so hollowed, so
piteous, that fear melted into compassion at the sight. The dark eyes
that stared upwards had a frightened look mingled with a certain
defiance. He stood barefooted on the edge of the cliff, clenching and
unclenching his bony hands, with the air of a culprit awaiting sentence.
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