Bates shovelled on steadily, as though this was a day like others;
but twice his knees gave and bent beneath him; and there was a
twitching of the livid under-lip, piteous to see.

It drew nearer, that silent needle, while Bates worked, delving,
barrowing, making little trips; plenty of time; and no one noted his
lip which pulled and twitched.

Without visible motion it came, wafted on the breaths of high
heaven: half an hour--and still it was remote, fifteen hundred feet
up. Bates and Hogarth peered to see a rope, but could none.

After fifty minutes it was actually over the moor, all now conscious
of it; but the rope was indistinguishable from the air.

Yet it was there, walking the ground, at its end a horizontal
staff....Hogarth, with wiser forethought than Loveday's, had
predicted, not a staff, but a loop.

It passed twenty yards from the quarry, Loveday no doubt imagining
that Hogarth still worked there; but the quarry was some hundred and
fifty yards from the trench.

Its course, nevertheless was toward the trench: and on walked
deliberately the fluctuating rope, the staff now travelling the
gorsey ground, now bounding like a kangaroo yards high, to come down
once more yonder.

A moment came when Hogarth, with intense hiss, was whispering to