ed
some of them, and Elvira no more changed her garden than her house. But
with care she succeeded in getting around these, and soon she knew by the
lessened force of the wind that she was near, if not directly under, the
high fence upon which she depended for guidance. A few bushes--another
unexpected obstacle, followed by a bad stumble--separated her from the
contact for which she had reached; then by a final effort her fingers
found the boards and she went eagerly on, dragging herself through the
wet without knowing it, and only stopping with a sense of shock, when her
hand, sliding from the boards, fell groping about in midair with nothing
to grasp at. She had come to the end of the fence and was within a foot
of the bridge--if the bridge was still there.

But her fears on this score were few, and she felt about with hand and
foot till the former struck the rail at her side, and the latter the
narrow planking spanning the gorge.

She hesitated now. Who would not? But the impulse which had led her thus
far continued to urge her on. She stepped upon the bridge and proceeded
to cross it, clinging to the rail with a feverish clutch, and feeling
every board with her foot before venturing to trust her full weight upon
it. She found them seemingly firm, and when about halfway across she
stopped to listen for the roar of the mountain stream which she knew to
be rushing over its rocky bed some forty awesome feet below her.

She heard it, but the swish of the trees lining the gorge was in her
straining ears and half drowned its sullen sound. With feelings
impossible to describe, she tossed up her arms to the skies, where a
single brilliant star was looking through the mass of quickly flying,
quickly disintegrating clouds. Then she sought again the safety of the
guiding rail, and clinging desperately to it, took one more step and
stopped with a smothered shriek. The rail had snapped under her hand and
had gone tumbling down into the abyss. She heard it as it struck, or
thought she did, and for a moment stood breathless and fearing to move,
the world and all it held vanishing in semi-unconsciousness from heart
and mind. What was she but a trembling atom floating in an unknown void
on the fathomless sea of eternity! Then, as her mind steadied, she began
to feel once more the boards under her feet, and to hear the smiting
together of the great limbs wrestling in the depths of the forest. She
even caught such a homely sound as t