Griffin clambered onto Connor’s shoulders and strained towards the next rung, but his hand was slippery with blood.

‘Griffin? You’ll not get good grip with that hand. Here!’

From below him Connor held up the leathern gauntlet, and the boy reached down and drove his hand inside it, and straight- ened, looked out across the world, and reached up and gripped the ladder, and began to climb.

Griffin saw now his own hands upon the rungs, and deep inside himself his soul shivered, for one hand was gloved and the other bare.

ut he climbed on, and silently beside him rose the spike to the steepletop, and there, as if in fulfill- ment of the dream, the cowled figure which was himself swung the spike around by main force. And as the sun cracked the eastern horizon and a bolt of light darted across the dark city. Griffin sank the spike into its waiting socket

Far below him, he heard the cheers of his mining band, and in a sudden ecstasy of triumph raised his fist to the sky. And then a black wing passed across his mind, his hand upon the spike lost grip, and the gauntlet fell away.

The boy pitched outwards from the steepletop, and tumbled toward the street below.

Alas! Griffin has forseen his own death.

Now what is to become of the pilgrims, how will they return blind without their guide?

SEE CHAPTER XXI