"Do you call yourself boys." "For _men_ then," said Forester.
"But _I_ am not a man," said Marco.
"Then I don't see how I can express my idea," said Forester.
Marco's attention was here diverted from the rhetorical difficulty in which Forester had become involved, by a very deep chasm upon one side of the path.

He went to the brink of it and could hear the roaring of a torrent far below.
"I mean to throw a stone down," said Marco.

He accordingly, after looking around for a moment, found a stone about as large as his head.
This stone he contrived to bring to the edge of the precipice and then to throw it over.

It went thundering down among the rocks and trees below, while Marco stood upon the brink and listened to the sound of the echoes and reverberations.

He then got another stone larger than the first, and threw that down; after which he and Forester resumed their journey.
The path, though it was a very rough and tortuous one, was pretty plain; and it is probable that the travelers would have found no difficulty in following it to the end of their route, had it not been for an occurrence which they had not at all anticipated, but which was one, nevertheless, that has often taken place to confuse the steps of mountain travelers and make them lose their way.