A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 195 



miles away. A handsome, bullying, travelled stranger, 

 a sailor or smuggler, who called himself Brewster, 

 came on the scene and very soon carried off pretty 

 Mary from her swain. Mark Pierce seems to have 

 been a youth of solid parts ; did nothing rashly, but 

 kept his eyes open and waited. When he found that 

 the interloper meant to take the girl to Brighton, he 

 laid his plans in an original way. There was a path 

 across the Downs to Mary's home ; at one point a 

 sheep-track made a short cut across a bend of the 

 path ; this sheep-track led close to the edge of a very 

 deep chalkpit ; on the land side there were remains 

 of an old flint wall, so that there was only about 

 eighteen inches of practicable path between that and 

 the almost vertical side of the pit. Pierce must have 

 been very much in earnest, as his plan was to make 

 an end of himself and his rival together. He knew 

 that the sailor used the narrow path on his journeys to 

 the farm, and knew when he would cross it, or perhaps 

 waited indefinitely for him. At last one night the two 

 met in the middle of the ledge, and clutched one 

 another. Pierce explained that they were both going 

 to the bottom. A struggle was, of course, the certain 

 way of sending them over ; and as they gripped each 

 other's collars or elbows, it was clearly impossible for 

 one to stay behind, Brewster probably had not the 



