mpending--then, still without a ripple or a tremor
takes the last long plunge as Curtius may have done when the gulf was
open in the Forum and he rode down the Aventine and spurred out into
thin air to fulfil the omens of the augurs and save the perilled life of
Rome,--he was just feeling and saying this, when a dark speck appeared
at the very edge of the green. It was a log, perhaps fifteen or twenty
feet in length, over the Fall!--a mere log, nothing in another place,
but everything in the place it for that moment occupied. For one instant
he saw it hang trembling on the verge, then for another its dark
outlines were thrown into clear relief against the bright green water
with the sunshine glimmering through; and then down, down it was hurled,
rushing like an arrow's flight into the feathery foam of the broken
water below, and at last (so far as human eye could ever know) into the
blinding mist at the bottom of the cataract. What a reed upon the brook
had been that log, that might have required the strength of a dozen men
to lift it from the ground!--what is the might with which the elements
make playthings of what seem to mortal strength dense and
immoveable--even as the great Power that is equally above nature and
above man, "holdeth the mountains in the hollow of his hand, and taketh
up the isles as a very little thing!"

"By George!" said Leslie. "What a lucky dog I am! I have known a
thousand people who wished for just such a view, and I have had it all
alone, after all!" He was not in the habit of holding conversations
aloud with himself; but he had been so impressed as to speak aloud
involuntarily, in this instance.

"No, not quite alone, if you please, Mr. Leslie!" said a deep voice
behind him, and at the same instant a hand was laid upon his shoulder.
He turned, and met the powerful form and singular face of Dexter
Ralston, the Virginian.

It was not unnatural that Leslie should be surprised; and it would be
idle to say that he was not even startled at this most unexpected
meeting, remembering what he did of the last three occasions on which he
had met this man--in each instance, as he had reason to suppose, his
observation being unknown to the other. He might have been pardoned if
he even shuddered, remembering the connection which he believed Ralston
to bear towards the "red woman"; and he was too ardent a Union man, as
we have seen, not instantly to remember the ambiguous circumstances
under which he ha