he cried, "I was stupid not to have told you how narrow the
way is; but it is safe. I can run in it. I ran all this way with the
ferns on my back I brought for you."

"Oh, did you?" gasped Ramona, diverted, for the moment, from her
contemplation of the abyss, and more reassured by that change of her
thoughts than she could have been by anything else. "Did you? It is
frightful, Alessandro. I never heard of such a trail. I feel as if I
were on a rope in the air. If I could get down and go on my hands and
knees, I think I would like it better. Could I?"

"I would not dare to have you get off, just here, Majella," answered
Alessandro, sorrowfully. "It is dreadful to me to see you suffer so; I
will go very slowly. Indeed, it is safe; we all came up here, the whole
band, for the sheep-shearing,--old Fernando on his horse all the way."

"Really," said Ramona, taking comfort at each word, "I will try not to
be so silly. Is it far, dearest Alessandro?"

"Not much more as steep as this, dear, nor so narrow; but it will be an
hour yet before we stop."

But the worst was over for Ramona now, and long before they reached the
bottom of the precipice she was ready to laugh at her fears; only,
as she looked back at the zigzag lines of the path over which she had
come,--little more than a brown thread, they seemed, flung along the
rock,--she shuddered.

Down in the bottom of the canon it was still the dusky gloaming when
they arrived. Day came late to this fairy spot. Only at high noon did
the sun fairly shine in. As Ramona looked around her, she uttered an
exclamation of delight, which satisfied Alessandro. "Yes," he said,
"when I came here for the ferns, I wished to myself many times that you
could see it. There is not in all this country so beautiful a place.
This is our first home, my Majella," he added, in a tone almost solemn;
and throwing his arms around her, he drew her to his breast, with the
first feeling of joy he had experienced.

"I wish we could live here always," cried Ramona.

"Would Majella be content?" said Alessandro.

"Very," she answered.

He sighed. "There would not be land enough, to live here," he said.
"If there were, I too would like to stay here till I died, Majella, and
never see the face of a white man again!" Already the instinct of the
hunted and wounded animal to seek hiding, was striving in Alessandro's
blood. "But there would be no food. We could not live here." Ramona's
exclamation had set