stories do not do for the dark. But to return;--were
it only for the sake of my child, you might depend upon me now; better
too an arrangement of this sort, than if I had a larger sum in hand
which I might be tempted to fling away, and in looking for more, run my
neck into a halter, and leave poor Jane upon charity. But come, it is
almost dark again, and no doubt you wish to be stirring: stay, I will
lead you back, and put you on the right track, lest you stumble on my
friends."

"Is this cavern one of their haunts?" said Aram.

"Sometimes: but they sleep the other side of the Devil's Crag to-night.
Nothing like a change of quarters for longevity--eh?"

"And they easily spare you."

"Yes, if it be only on rare occasions, and on the plea of family
business. Now then, your hand, as before. Jesu! how it rains--lightning
too--I could look with less fear on a naked sword, than those red,
forked, blinding flashes--Hark! thunder."

The night had now, indeed, suddenly changed its aspect; the rain
descended in torrents, even more impetuously than on the former night,
while the thunder burst over their very heads, as they wound upward
through the brake. With every instant, the lightning broke from the
riven chasm of the blackness that seemed suspended as in a solid
substance above, brightened the whole heaven into one livid and terrific
flame, and showed to the two men the faces of each other, rendered
deathlike and ghastly by the glare. Houseman was evidently affected
by the fear that sometimes seizes even the sturdiest criminals, when
exposed to those more fearful phenomena of the Heavens, which seem to
humble into nothing the power and the wrath of man. His teeth chattered,
and he muttered broken words about the peril of wandering near trees
when the lightning was of that forked character, accelerating his
pace at every sentence, and sometimes interrupting himself with an
ejaculation, half oath, half prayer, or a congratulation that the rain
at least diminished the danger. They soon cleared the thicket, and a
few minutes brought them once more to the banks of the stream, and the
increased roar of the cataract. No earthly scene perhaps could surpass
the appalling sublimity of that which they beheld;--every instant the
lightning, which became more and more frequent, converting the black
waters into billows of living fire, or wreathing itself in lurid spires
around the huge crag that now rose in sight; and again, as the thun