onged to have with her. While she was
drawing, Guy began to climb higher, and was soon out of sight, though
she still heard him whistling. The mountains were not easy to draw,
or rather she grew discontented with her black lines and white paper,
compared with the dazzling snow against the blue sky, tinged by the
roseate tints of the setting sun, and the dark fissures on the rocky
sides, still blacker from the contrast.

She put up her sketching materials, and began to gather some of the
delightful treasury of mountain flowers. A gentle slope of grass was
close to her, and on it grew, at some little distance from her, a tuft
of deep purple, the beautiful Alpine saxifrage, which she well knew by
description. She went to gather it, but the turf was slippery, and when
once descending, she could not stop herself; and what was the horror of
finding herself half slipping, half running down a slope, which became
steeper every moment, till it was suddenly broken off into a sheer
precipice! She screamed, and grasped with both hands at some low bushes,
that grew under a rock at the side of the treacherous turf. She caught
a branch, and found herself supported, by clinging to it with her hands,
while she rested on the slope, now so nearly perpendicular, that to lose
her hold would send her instantly down the precipice. Her whole weight
seemed to depend on that slender bough, and those little hands that
clenched it convulsively,--her feet felt in vain for some hold. 'Guy!
Guy!' she shrieked again. Oh, where was he? His whistle ceased,--he
heard her,--he called,

'Here!'

'Oh, help me!' she answered. But with that moment's joy came the horror,
he could not help her--he would only fall himself. 'Take care! don't
come on the grass!' she cried. She must let go the branch in a short,
time then a slip, the precipice,--and what would become of him? Those
moments were hours.

'I am coming--hold fast!' She heard his voice above her, very near.
To find him so close made the agony of dread and of prayer even more
intense. To be lost, with her husband scarcely a step from her! Yet how
could he stand on the slippery turf, and so as to be steady enough to
raise her up?

'Now, then!' he said, speaking from the rock under which the brushwood
grew, 'I cannot reach you unless you raise up your hand to me--your left
hand--straight up. Let go. Now!'

It was a fearful moment. Amabel could not see him, and felt as if
relinquishing her grasp of th