against which some sails showed inkily, like silhouettes.

She was wondering vaguely why sails should look so white in shore and so
black far out to sea, when she was startled by a sharp tap! tap!
apparently at her very elbow.

She jumped a little, then listened wonderingly. It came again--tap!
tap! tap!--then a pause; and then an unmistakably human exclamation of
impatience, while a bit of rock went whirling past her, to plunge with a
resounding thud into the torrent below.

She leaned just the least bit forward and looked around the side of her
alcove to see a funny sight. There stood a little man in the attitude of
the Colossus of Rhodes, his bare bald head red and perspiring, and his
eyes glaring through huge gold-bowed glasses at a bit of rock in one
hand, which he had evidently just broken off with the hammer in the
other.

He was muttering something unintelligible to Sara, and looked altogether
quite queer and cross enough to be a denizen of this ill-named locality.

Sara, laughing to herself at the funny apparition, was drawing into the
rocky shell again, when a mischievous puff of wind suddenly caught her
gingham bonnet from her limp grasp, and sent it flying down the chasm
after the piece of rock.

She heard the exclamation again, louder and more guttural than before,
then the full moon of a face peered around her sheltering wall, and the
voice said,--