bove the
abyss. I bent my eye eagerly and fixedly on the spot whence the sound
proceeded, and presently could distinguish the blue sky appearing
through an aperture, to which was, the instant afterwards, applied what
I conceived to be a human face. No sooner, however, was it seen than
withdrawn; and then the rustling of leaves was heard again, and all was
still as before.

"Why did my evil genius so will it," resumed Wacousta, after another
pause, during which he manifested deep emotion, "that I should have
heard those sounds and seen that face? But for these I should have
returned to my companions, and my life might have been the life--the
plodding life--of the multitude; things that are born merely to crawl
through existence and die, knowing not at the moment of death why or
how they have lived at all. But who may resist the destiny that
presides over him from the cradle to the grave? for, although the mass
may be, and are, unworthy of the influencing agency of that Unseen
Power, who will presume to deny there are those on whom it stamps its
iron seal, even from the moment of their birth to that which sees all
that is mortal of them consigned to the tomb? What was it but destiny
that whispered to me what I had seen was the face of a woman? I had not
traced a feature, nor could I distinctly state that it was a human
countenance I had beheld; but mine was ever an imagination into which
the wildest improbability was scarce admitted that it did not grow into
conviction in the instant.

"A new direction was now given to my feelings. I felt a presentiment
that my adventure, if prosecuted, would terminate in some extraordinary
and characteristic manner; and obeying, as I ever did, the first
impulse of my heart, I prepared to grapple once more with the
difficulties that yet remained to be surmounted. In order to do this,
it was necessary that my feet and hands should be utterly without
incumbrance; for it was only by dint of climbing that I could expect to
reach that part of the projecting rock to which my attention had been
directed. Securing my gun between some twisted roots that grew out of
and adhered to the main body of the rock, I commenced the difficult
ascent; and, after considerable effort, found myself at length
immediately under the aperture. My progress along the lower superficies
of this projection was like that of a crawling reptile. My back hung
suspended over the chasm, into which one false movement of hand