and down he went, by stock and stone, sedge and ledge, bush and
rush, as if he had been born a jolly little black ape, with four
hands instead of two.

And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman coming down behind
him.

But he was getting terribly tired now. The burning sun on the
fells had sucked him up; but the damp heat of the woody crag sucked
him up still more; and the perspiration ran out of the ends of his
fingers and toes, and washed him cleaner than he had been for a
whole year. But, of course, he dirtied everything, terribly as he
went. There has been a great black smudge all down the crag ever
since. And there have been more black beetles in Vendale since
than ever were known before; all, of course, owing to Tom's having
blacked the original papa of them all, just as he was setting off
to be married, with a sky-blue coat and scarlet leggins, as smart
as a gardener's dog with a polyanthus in his mouth.

At last he got to the bottom. But, behold, it was not the bottom--
as people usually find when they are coming down a mountain. For
at the foot of the crag were heaps and heaps of fallen limestone of
every size from that of your head to that of a stage-waggon, with
holes between them full of sweet heath-fern; and before Tom got
through them, he was out in the bright sunshine again; and then he
felt, once for all and suddenly, as people generally do, that he
was b-e-a-t, beat.

You must expect to be beat a few times in your life, little man, if
you live such a life as a man ought to live, let you be as strong