The fall was almost sheer and quite impossible to descend. I was greatly agitated, and for some moments was at a loss what to do. I believed my friend lay at the foot of the precipice, but could form no conjecture as to how he could have got there."
"Describe your course of action."
"I returned to the ponies, with the purpose of riding with all speed to find the nearest point of descent, and was in the act of mounting when I saw two men on foot approaching from the angle of the road behind me. They were two working men, and are now in court."
"You rushed to meet them and told them what had occurred?"
"It was Mr. Carboyne's field-glass."
"I did. They informed me that I should find a descent about a mile further on, and offered to guide me to the spot. I gladly accepted; we set forward in the direction in which we had been travelling, and had nearly reached the other angle of the bay round which the path again turned, when some heavy object fell from the cliff upon the road, a few yards from us. We darted forward to the spot, and I took it up. It was Mr. Carboyne's field-glass." (Sensation in court.)
"Proceed, Mr. Staymer."
"We all three then looked up and saw, on the top of a young sapling which shot out almost at right angles to the cliff, a cap hanging. It was about half-way up the cliff—some thirty feet or so."
"You recognised the cap."
"Yes; it was Mr. Carboyne's."
"You formed no idea as to how it got there?"
"None. I was completely bewildered, and am still."
"Did you attempt to reach the cap?"
"No it was impossible to do so. The cliff was sheer wall—a goat could not have found a foothold."
"What happened next?"
"I endeavoured, with the aid of my own glasses, to discover any other trace or clue, but failed to do so. At the top the cliff overhung a little, and then appeared to form a plateau, of which, of course, I could not see the surface. I resolved to ascend to it, and to look down; I hardly know what I
