knees, and, guiding himself with his right hand, crept slowly on. He had
scarcely entered the arch, when the indraught was so violent, and the
noise of the wind so dreadful and astounding, that he almost determined
to relinquish the undertaking. But the love of life prevailed over his
fears. He went on.

The ledge, along which he crawled, was about a foot wide. In length the
arch exceeded seventy feet. To the poor carpenter it seemed an endless
distance. When, by slow and toilsome efforts, he had arrived midway,
something obstructed his further progress. It was a huge stone placed
there by some workmen occupied in repairing the structure. Cold drops
stood upon Wood's brow, as he encountered this obstacle. To return was
impossible,--to raise himself certain destruction. He glanced downwards
at the impetuous torrent, which he could perceive shooting past him with
lightning swiftness in the gloom. He listened to the thunder of the fall
now mingling with the roar of the blast; and, driven almost frantic by
what he heard and saw, he pushed with all his force against the stone.
To his astonishment and delight it yielded to the pressure, toppled over
the ledge, and sank. Such was the hubbub and tumult around him, that
the carpenter could not hear its plunge into the flood. His course,
however, was no longer interrupted, and he crept on.

After encountering other dangers, and being twice, compelled to fling
himself flat upon his face to avoid slipping from the wet and slimy
pathway, he was at length about to emerge from the lock, when, to his
inexpressible horror, he found he had lost the child!

All the blood in his veins rushed to his heart, and he shook in every
limb as he made this discovery. A species of vertigo seized him. His
brain reeled. He fancied that the whole fabric of the bridge was
cracking over head,--that the arch was tumbling upon him,--that the
torrent was swelling around him, whirling him off, and about to bury him
in the deafening abyss. He shrieked with agony, and clung with desperate
tenacity to the roughened stones. But calmer thoughts quickly succeeded.
On taxing his recollection, the whole circumstance rushed to mind with
painful distinctness. He remembered that, before he attempted to
dislodge the stone, he had placed the child in a cavity of the pier,
which the granite mass had been intended to fill. This obstacle being
removed, in his eagerness to proceed, he had forgotten to take his
little charg