"

"That! that!" gasped Saxe.

"Ah! yes. Like some terrible eye. Come along. I can't think that
anything would stay here. It would be swept along at a tremendous rate.
That water is going almost at the rate of a great fall. They must have
been borne right through long ago."

"Think so?" Saxe tried to say. Certainly his lips moved; and roused
now from the strange fascination, he crept on after his leader, their
progress being very slow in spite of their anxiety, for all was new and
strange, and the next step, for aught they knew, might plunge them down
to a fall like their guide's.

Then the way was dangerously narrow at times, one dripping place forcing
them to stoop--so heavily overhung the rock above.

At last, just in front of them, the gorge seemed to end, for the place
was blocked by a wall that ran across the narrow rift at right angles,
and against this the whole body of water was propelled, to strike
straight upon it, and rise up like a billow of the sea and fall back
with a furious roar. Here the foam formed so dense a mist that Dale had
crept right into it before he realised that, as the water fell back, it
shot away through the gloom to his left, forming a fresh billow against
a perpendicular wall before it again darted onward.

"Has this awful place no end!" he said, as he grasped the meaning of
this fresh disturbance of its course; and he peered forward again for
the path, it being absolute madness to think of seeing anything in the
watery chaos below. Then, looking back, it was as if some icy hand had
clutched his heart, for he was alone.

For the moment he felt that Saxe must have slipped and fallen, and in
the agony he suffered he fancied himself back again in England facing
the boy's father and trying to plead some excuse for the want of care.
Saxe was entrusted to him for a few months' visit to the Alps--a visit
to combine pleasure and instruction, as well as to gain more robust
health.

As he thought this he was already on his way back to the sharp angle he
had passed round, and as he reached it his horror and despair became
almost unbearable.

But this part of his suffering had its termination; and he fully grasped
that, like as in a dream, all this had occupied but a few moments of
time, for a hand was thrust round the stony angle and searched for a
projection, and as Dale eagerly grasped the humid palm, Saxe glided
round and then followed him into the corner, beneath which the w