k, along with all
the congregation. An unseen hand seemed fastening her fingers to the
ribs of ivy, and in sudden inspiration, believing that her life was to
be saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been changed into
a winged creature. Again her feet touched stones and earth--the psalm
was hushed--but a tremulous sobbing voice was close beside her, and a
she-goat, with two little kids at her feet. "Wild heights," thought she,
"do these creatures climb--but the dam will lead down her kids by the
easiest paths; for in the brute creatures holy is the power of a
mother's love!" and turning round her head, she kissed her sleeping
baby, and for the first time she wept.

Overhead frowned the front of the precipice, never touched before by
human hand or foot. No one had ever dreamt of scaling it, and the Golden
Eagles knew that well in their instinct, as, before they built their
eyrie, they had brushed it with their wings. But the downwards part of
the mountain-side, though scarred, and seamed, and chasmed, was yet
accessible--and more than one person in the parish had reached the
bottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many were now attempting it--and ere the
cautious mother had followed her dumb guides a hundred yards, through
among dangers that, although enough to terrify the stoutest heart, were
traversed by her without a shudder, the head of one man appeared, and
then the head of another, and she knew that God had delivered her and
her child into the care of their fellow-creatures. Not a word was
spoken--she hushed her friends with her hands--and with uplifted eyes
pointed to the guides sent to her by Heaven. Small green plats, where
those creatures nibble the wildflowers, became now more
frequent--trodden lines, almost as plain as sheep-paths, showed that the
dam had not led her young into danger; and now the brushwood dwindled
away into straggling shrubs, and the party stood on a little eminence
above the stream, and forming part of the strath.

There had been trouble and agitation, much sobbing and many tears, among
the multitude, while the mother was scaling the cliffs--sublime was the
shout that echoed afar the moment she reached the eyrie--then had
succeeded a silence deep as death--in a little while arose that hymning
prayer, succeeded by mute supplication--the wildness of thankful and
congratulatory joy had next its sway--and now that her salvation was
sure, the great crowd rustled like a wind-swept wood. And fo