d about
his own bound them down with a grasp of steel; and after a few moments
of desperate effort, accompanied with one or two exclamations,
half-surprise, half-expostulation, of "Hello, friend, what do you mean?"
and "I say, now, friend, you'd better have done--" the struggle ceased,
and he lay supine in the hold of the unseen persons who had secured him.

These persons he could not then discern; the passage was cavernously
dark, and had evidently been as much the work of nature as of art. A
handkerchief was fastened about his eyes, and he felt himself carried on
the shoulders of those who made nothing of the burden. After the
progress of several minutes, in which the anxiety natural to his
situation led Bunce into frequent exclamations and entreaties, he was
set down, the bandage was removed from his eyes, and he was once more
permitted their free exercise.

To his great wonder, however, nothing but women, of all sizes and ages,
met his sight. In vain did he look around for the men who brought him.
They were no longer to be seen, and so silent had been their passage
out, that the unfortunate pedler was compelled to satisfy himself with
the belief that persons of the gentler sex had been in truth his
captors.

Had he, indeed, given up the struggle so easily? The thought was
mortifying enough; and yet, when he looked around him, he grew more
satisfied with his own efforts at resistance. He had never seen such
strongly-built women in his life: scarcely one of them but could easily
have overthrown him, without stratagem, in single combat. The faces of
many of them were familiar to him; but where had he seen them before?
His memory failed him utterly, and he gave himself up to his
bewilderment.

He looked around, and the scene was well calculated to affect a nervous
mind. It was a fit scene for the painter of the supernatural. The small
apartment in which they were, was formed in great part from the natural
rock; where a fissure presented itself, a huge pine-tree, overthrown so
as to fill the vacuity, completed what nature had left undone; and,
bating the one or two rude cavities left here and there in the
sides--themselves so covered as to lie hidden from all without--there
was all the compactness of a regularly-constructed dwelling. A single
and small lamp, pendent from a beam that hung over the room, gave a
feeble light, which, taken in connection with that borrowed from
without, served only to make visible the da