on. It takes the rag off quite.
Well, she was an enterprisin' little toad, was Miss Lot too, afeered of
nothin' a'most; so nothin' would sarve her but she must out and have a
scramb up to the tip-topest part of the peak afore breakfast.

"Well, the squatter there, who was a kind o' guide, did what he could to
dispersuade her, but all to no purpose; go she would, and a headstrong
woman and a runaway hoss are jist two things it's out of all reason to
try to stop; The only way is to urge 'em on, and then, bein' contr_ary_
by natur', they stop of themselves.

"'Well,' sais the guide, 'if you will go, marm, do take this pike staff,
marm,' sais he; (a sort of walkin'-stick with a spike to the eend of
it), 'for you can't get either up or down them slopes without it, it is
so almighty slippy there.' So she took the staff, and off she sot and
climbed and climbed ever so far, till she didn't look no bigger than a
snowbird.

"At last she came to a small flat place, like a table, and then she
turned round to rest, get breath, and take a look at the glorious view;
and jist as she hove-to, up went her little heels, and away went her
stick, right over a big parpendicular cliff, hundreds and hundreds, and
thousands of feet deep. So deep, you couldn't see the bottom for the
shadows, for the very snow looked black down there. There is no way in,
it is so steep, but over the cliff; and no way out, but one, and that
leads to t'other world. I can't describe it to you, though. I have see'd
it since myself. There are some things too big to lift; some, too big
to carry after they be lifted; and some too grand for the tongue to
describe too. There's a notch where dictionary can't go no farther, as
well as every other created thing, that's a fact. P'rhaps if I was to
say it looked like the mould that that 'are very peak was cast in, afore
it was cold and stiff, and sot up on eend, I should come as near the
mark as any thing I know on.

"Well away she slid, feet and hands out, all flat on her face, right
away, arter her pike staff. Most people would have ginn it up as gone
goose, and others been so frightened as not to do any thing at all; or
at most only jist to think of a prayer, for there was no time to say
one.

"But not so Lot's 'wife. She was of a conquerin' natur'. She never gave
nothin' up, till she couldn't hold on no longer. She was one o' them
critters that go to bed mistress, and rise master; and just as she
got to the edge of t