Tearless sobs convulsed her throat,-- "Oh, God of mercy!" she moaned in suffocated accents--"How can I follow him down there! Oh, help me, Mary mother! Help me! I must--I must be with him!" She gathered up her hair in a close coil and wound her skirts tightly about her, looking everywhere for a footing.

She saw a deep cranny which had been hollowed out by some torrent of water--it cut sharply through the rock like a path,--she could risk that perhaps, she thought,--and yet her brain reeled--she felt sick and giddy--would it not be wiser to stay where she was and wait for the return of the reckless creature who had ventured all alone into one of the deepest canons of the whole country?
While she hesitated she caught a sudden glimpse of him, stepping with apparent ease over huge heaps of stones and fallen pieces of rock at the bottom of the declivity,--she watched his movements in breathless suspense.

On he went towards a vast aperture, shaped arch-wise like the entrance to a cavern--he paused a moment--then entered it.

This was enough for Manella--her wild love and wilder terror gave her an almost supernatural strength and daring,--and all heedless now of results she sprang boldly towards the deep cutting in the rock, swinging herself from jagged point to point till--reaching the bottom of the declivity at last, bruised and bleeding, but undaunted,--she stopped, checked by a rushing stream which tumbled over great boulders and dashed its cold spray in her face.

Looking about her she saw to her dismay that the vaulted cavern wherein Seaton had disappeared was on the other side of this stream--she stood almost opposite to it--but how to get across?
Gazing despairingly in every direction she suddenly perceived the fallen trunk of a tree lying half in and half out of the brawling torrent--it was green with slippery moss and offered but a dangerous foothold,--nevertheless she resolved to attempt it.
"I said I would die for him!" she thought--"and I will!" Getting astride the tree, it swayed under her,--but she found she could push one of the larger boughs forward to lengthen the extemporary bridge,--and so, as it were, riding the waters, which surged noisily around her, she managed by dint of super-human effort to reach the projection of pebbly shore where the entrance to the cavern yawned open before her, black and desolate.