Maple’s nighttime visit to the cliff

Miss Maple’s nighttime visit to the cliff is a brief, suspenseful excursion in which a strange sound draws her into danger and leaves her with a troubling sight back at the barn: Sir Ritchfield, soaked and motionless. The episode turns her alertness into a test of nerve, but offers no clear explanation for either the sound or the old ram’s condition.

The Sound in the Rain

The visit follows a disquieting awakening. Though the sheep around Miss Maple carry the familiar scents of her flock, something about them seems wrong; she senses movement near the barn door and has difficulty orienting herself in the darkness. Once the other sheep fall quiet, she hears the rain again. Thinking of the lamb who had seen a ghost, she sets out toward the dolmen, but a sharp, ringing noise like stone striking stone comes from the cliffs and redirects her.

Rain falls heavily enough to soak her fleece and make her feel twice her usual weight. The cliffs are precisely where she does not want to encounter The wolf’s apparition on a pitch-dark night, yet she continues toward the sound. Her decision makes the scene a small confrontation between fear and the obligation she feels to investigate what has disturbed the night.

At the Cliff Edge

The sea reflects enough light for Miss Maple to make out the coastline, but there is no one on the cliffs. She reasons that whoever made the noise must have fallen, then cautiously feels her way toward the edge of the slippery slope. She cannot see into the abyss or judge its depth. When she turns back, wet grass makes retreat difficult, and she concludes that someone has set a trap for her and that she has walked into it.

No one appears behind her to push her over the edge. After waiting a long time, Miss Maple loses patience and jumps backward to firmer ground. The danger thus remains uncertain: she escapes the hazardous slope, but the scene never identifies who made the ringing sound or whether anyone was there at all.

Return to the Barn

Miss Maple trots back to the hay barn and pauses at its door to take a deep breath. This time, the air smells only of her flock. Relief comes with a physical aftershock: her legs are trembling, and she searches for Cloud, who is still bleating softly in her sleep. The return to familiar scents and sleeping companions contrasts with the disorientation that sent her into the rain.

Then one of Miss Maple’s shaking hooves steps into something warm and liquid. It is dripping from Sir Ritchfield, who stands motionless with his eyes closed, soaked as though he has been underwater for a very long time. Miss Maple rests her head on Cloud’s woolly back and thinks. The episode ends without explaining how Sir Ritchfield became so wet or what the sound at the cliffs meant; its final image replaces the apparent threat at the edge with a fresh, unresolved mystery inside the flock’s shelter.