t,
upon which he sat down, as he was very glad to do, and looked
mechanically about him. A small fragment splintered from the rock was at
his feet. He took it and threw it down the declivity a little below
where he sat. He looked about for a stem or a straw of some kind to bite
upon,--a country-instinct,--relic, no doubt, of the old
vegetable-feeding habits of Eden. Is that a stem or a straw? He picked
it up. It was a hair-pin.

To say that Mr. Langdon had a strange sort of thrill shoot through him at
the sight of this harmless little implement would be a statement not at
variance with the fact of the case. That smooth stone had been often
trodden, and by what foot he could not doubt. He rose up from his seat to
look round for other signs of a woman's visits. What if there is a
cavern here, where she has a retreat, fitted up, perhaps, as anchorites
fitted their cells,--nay, it may be, carpeted and mirrored, and with one
of those tiger-skins for a couch, such as they, say the girl loves to lie
on? Let us look, at any rate.

Mr. Bernard walked to the mouth of the cavern or fissure and looked into
it. His look was met by the glitter of two diamond eyes, small, sharp,
cold, shining out of the darkness, but gliding with a smooth, steady
motion towards the light, and himself. He stood fixed, struck dumb,
staring back into them with dilating pupils and sudden numbness of fear
that cannot move, as in the terror of dreams. The two sparks of light
came forward until they grew to circles of flame, and all at once lifted
themselves up as if in angry surprise. Then for the first time thrilled
in Mr. Bernard's ears the dreadful sound that nothing which breathes, be
it man or brute, can hear unmoved,--the long, loud, stinging whirr, as
the huge, thick bodied reptile shook his many-jointed rattle and adjusted
his loops for the fatal stroke. His eyes were drawn as with magnets
toward the circles of flame. His ears rung as in the overture to the
swooning dream of chloroform. Nature was before man with her
anaesthetics: the cat's first shake stupefies the mouse; the lion's first
shake deadens the man's fear and feeling; and the crotalus paralyzes
before he strikes. He waited as in a trance,--waited as one that longs
to have the blow fall, and all over, as the man who shall be in two
pieces in a second waits for the axe to drop. But while he looked
straight into the flaming eyes, it seemed to him that they were losing
the