CHAPTER XIX.
A Strange Character at Breakfast—"The Rambler" and his Antecedents—What Horace Townsend heard about Fate—Going up to Pic-nic on Mount Willard—The Plateau, the Rope and the Swing—Spreading the Banquet—The Dinner-call and a Cry which answered it—A Fearful Situation.
At breakfast, the next morning after the departure of the Illinoisan, a somewhat strange character was called to the attention of the guests at the Crawford; and a few of them, sitting near him, entered into conversation with him when they discovered the peculiar habits of life and mind which had for years made him an object of interest to visitors among the mountains. He had been absent southward of the range, in Pinkham Notch, at Glen Ellis Falls and other wild localities lying north of Conway, for the preceding two or three weeks, only arriving the night before; and very few of the persons then present at the Crawford had seen him except in half-forgotten meetings in previous years. He called himself and was called by others who knew him (very few of whom, probably, knew him by any other name) "The Rambler," and his habits of life were said to justify the appellation most completely, as his appearance certainly accorded with the preconceived opinions of an itinerant hermit.
He was a man evidently past fifty, with a face much wrinkled by time and roughened by exposure—with a high forehead bald nearly to the apex of the head, long grizzled hair, rapidly approaching to white, tumbled about in careless profusion, beard straggling and ungraceful and graying as fast as the hair, and something melancholy and unsettled in the eye which indicated that his wandering habits might have had an origin, many years before, in some loss or misfortune that made quiet a torture. In figure he was rather below than above the middle height, with a certain wiriness in the limbs and a hard look in the bones and tendons of the hand, suggestive of unusual activity and an iron grip.
But when they came to know more of him from the explanations of the servants and a little listening to his own conversation, those who on that occasion first met him had reason to confess that the Rambler needed all the iron nerve and hard endurance indicated by his physique. They believed him to be a man of means, and he certainly spent money with freedom if not with lavishness, the supply seeming to be as slight and yet as inexhaustible as that of the widow's cruse. He spent very little of it upon his own person, however: such a suit of coarse gray woollen as he wore that morning, with a slouched hat and strong brogan shoes, usually completing his outer equipment. Sometimes he carried a heavy cane, but much oftener went armed with a stout staff of his own length, cut with ready hawks-bill jack-knife from a convenient oaken or hickory sapling and trimmed from its superabundance of knots by the same easily-managed substitute for a whole "kit" of carpenters'-tools.
This man, as it appeared, had never missed coming to the mountains for a single summer of the preceding fifteen years. Whence he came, no one knew; and whither he went when his season was over (his season had very little to do with the fashionable one, in commencement or duration), was known quite as little. He might be looked for, they said, at the Profile, the Crawford, the Glen, the Alpine, the White Mountain or down in Pinkham Notch, at any time after they began to paint up and repair the houses for the reception of visitors, in early June; and he might be expected to make his appearance at any or all of those places, any day or no day, during the fall season and even up to the time when the last coach-load rolled away in September and the first snows began to sprinkle themselves on the brows of Washington and Lafayette. He never remained at any one of the houses more than a few hours at a time, carrying away from each a few sandwiches, a little dried tongue, some cheese and crackers in a small haversack, and sleeping nine nights out of ten in the open air, with no pillow but a stone or a log of wood, and his slouched hat. Most of the time he was alone on the tops of the most difficult peaks or at the bottom of gorges where no foot but his own would be likely to tread; or he was to be seen dodging across a path, staff in hand and haversack on side, as a party was making some one of the ascents,—rather shunning any company then seeking it, and yet evidently neither misanthropic nor embarrassed when thrown into society and forced into conversation. Wherever he wished to go he went on foot, even when thirty or forty miles of rough mountain roads and paths were to be measured; and no man, they averred, had ever seen him set foot over the side of a vehicle or recognize the right of the animal man to be drawn about from place to place by his brother animal the horse.
So far the Rambler, according to the accounts given of him, was merely a harmless monomaniac—harmless even to himself, as all monomaniacs are not. But beyond that point, the servants and some of the old habitues averred, came positive madness. He had been mad, since the first day of his coming to the mountains and perhaps long before, on the idea of climbing. Many had seen him go up to those peaks and down into those ravines before mentioned, and found as little disposition as ability to follow him. He seemed to climb without purpose, except his purpose might be the mere reckless exposure of himself to danger at which every one except himself would draw back with a shudder. And that he did this without any motive outside of himself for the action—that he had no thought of awakening admiration by such exhibitions,—was evident from the fact that he was just as likely to make some ascent or descent of the most reckless fool-hardiness, when he did not know of the presence of any other person within possible sight, as when he had groups of horrified spectators; and that loneliness was not a condition precedent to such an attempt, was just as evident from the fact that he never seemed to desist because one person or fifty came suddenly upon him and "caught him in the act." He seemed to live in a climbing world of his own, in which he was the only resident and all the others merely chance visitors who might or might not be in the way when he found it necessary to hang himself like a fly on the crags between heaven and earth.
We are making no attempt whatever at analyzing the mentality of this singular man, whom many will remember as having met him during some period of the last dozen years, at one or more of the Notches of the White Mountains. As well might the attempt be made to survey one of his own mountain tops or discover the superfices of one of the mighty masses of perpendicular rock that so often afforded him a footing at which the chamois would have given up in despair and Hervio Nano (that human "fly on the ceiling") writhed his boneless limbs in a shudder! We are only roughly daguerreotyping the man as he appeared, preparatory to one terrible incident which made him an important character in this narration. Were any effort to be made at explaining his strange and apparently purposeless predilection, perhaps one word would come as near to furnishing the explanation as five hundred others—excitement. One man drinks liquors until he goes beyond himself; another invites to his brain the tempting demons of opium, hasheesh or nicotine; another perils his prosperity and the very bread of his family at play; still another plunges into pleasure so deeply that the draught is all the while maddening agony; and yet another claps spur on heel and takes sword in hand and rides into the thick of the deadliest fight, without one motive of patriotism or one thought of duty: and all these are seeking that which will temporarily lift them above and beyond themselves (alas!—that which will just as assuredly plunge them below themselves, in reaction!)—excitement. Who knows that the poor Rambler, bankrupt in heart, hope and memory, had not tasted all the other maddening bowls and found them too weak to wean him from his hour of suffering, so that when the frequent paroxysm came he had no alternative but to place himself in some position where the hand and the foot could become masters of every thought and feeling, that the rude minstrelsy of deadly danger might thus charm away the black moment from his soul!
All this is mere speculation—the man may have been nothing more nor less than a maniac; and yet his conversation, which was coherent and marked by entire propriety, did not create any such impression.
No one who has made any study of the scenery of our Northern Mountains fails to know that many of them (and almost all the White Mountains that have full descent on either side to either of the Notches) in addition to the bald scarred brows of cliff that on one side or another seem like faces lifting themselves in stern defiance to the storm,—have chased down them, from brow to foot, channels or "schutes" from which the torrent or the lightning has originally shorn away trees, herbage and at last earth, every year wearing them deeper and making more startling the contrast of the almost direct line of bluish gray cliff, seeming the very mockery of a path that no man can walk, with the green of the living grass and foliage and the white skeletons of the dead birches, that border them on either side. Perhaps no feature of the mountain scenery is more certain to awake a shudder, than such "schutes," as looked up to from below or down upon from above; as the thought of a passage-way is inevitable, followed by the remembrance of the headlong fall of any man who should attempt a progress so nearly perpendicular, and that followed by the imagination that the gazer has really attempted it and is falling. Mount Webster and Mount Willard, at the White Mountain Notch, are more marked than almost any of the others, by such features; and certain terrible adventures along those "schutes" make part of the repertoires of guides and the boasting stories of old habitues. With one of those descending Mount Willard, and the points of scenery immediately surrounding it, we shall have painful occasion to make more intimate acquaintance in this immediate connection.
These "schutes" and their topography were the subject of conversation at the breakfast-table that morning, not alone on account of the presence of the Rambler, which might have provoked it, but from the fact that a pic-nic on the top of Mount Willard, in the near vicinity of one of those tempting horrors, had been for some days in contemplation and the wagons were being prepared for going up and the cold food packing away in baskets and hampers at the very moment of that discussion.
"You must know the mountains remarkably well," one of the gentlemen at the table was saying to the Rambler.
"I ought to do so," was the reply. "There is scarcely a spot from Littleton to Winnipiseogee that my foot has not touched; and I may almost say that there is not a spot where I have not eaten or slept." He said this in a manner as far removed from any desire to make a display of himself as from any thing like modesty—merely as the fact, and therefore a matter of course.
"I heard you speaking of climbing the schutes a moment ago, but I did not quite catch what you said," spoke another. "You certainly cannot hold on to the rocks alone, when they are so nearly perpendicular, can you?"
"Oh, no," answered the Rambler, "of course that would be impossible. I suppose I have a sure foot and a steady hand, and those schutes always have trees and shrubbery beside them, all the way down. It is no trouble to hold on to them—at least it is not so to me."
"Ugh!" said yet another—"rather you than me! Such exposures are terrible!" and he shuddered at the picture his imagination had been drawing.
"They may be terrible, and I suppose that they are so, to some people," was the quiet reply. "Habit is every thing, no doubt. Some of you might walk into battle, if you have been there before, a good deal more coolly than I could do, even though you had a good deal more to sacrifice in life than myself in the event of a bullet going astray."
"Bullets never go astray, nor do men fall down the rocks accidentally!" put in a breakfaster who wore a white neckcloth but no mock-sanctimonious visage. "I am afraid, brothers, that you all forget the Overruling Hand which guides all things and prevents what thoughtless people call 'accidents.'"
"Ah!" said Horace Townsend. "Domine, do you carry fatalism, or predestination, if you like the word any better,—so far as to believe that every step of a man is supernaturally protected?"
"It is supernaturally ordered, beyond a doubt: it may be protected, or quite the opposite," was the minister's smiling reply. "And I might go a step further and say that every man is supernaturally upheld, when doing a great duty, however dangerous, so that that result may follow, whether it come in life or death, in success or failure—which may be eventually best for him as well as best for the interests of heaven and earth, all men and all time."
"A sublime thought, and one that may be worth calling to mind a good many times in life!" was all the reply that the lawyer made, and he took no further part in the conversation. He sat back in his chair, the moment after; and Margaret Hayley (who had now become to some extent his "observer," as he had erewhile filled the same office to Halstead Rowan and Clara Vanderlyn)—Margaret Hayley, sitting at a considerable distance up the table on the opposite side, saw that his face seemed strangely moved, and that there was intense thought in the eye that looked straight forward and yet apparently gazed on vacancy.
Meanwhile the Rambler had not yet ceased to be an object of interest; and a little warning (such as he had undoubtedly heard a good many times during his strange life) was to follow the inquiries and the speculations.
"Then you probably do not think, Domine," said one of the interlocutors in response to the remark which seemed to have struck Horace Townsend so forcibly, "that our friend here is under any especial supernatural protection when climbing up and down places where he has no errand whatever except his own amusement."
"I might think so, if I had the power to decide that he was really attempting no good whatever to himself or others," was the reply. "But as I cannot so decide, though I certainly think such exposures of life very imprudent, I shall be very careful not to express any such opinion."
"Well, sir, I certainly wish you no harm," said another, "but if all accounts are true, I think that you expose yourself very recklessly, and I expect, some day, to hear that the pitcher you have carried once too often to the well is broken at last."
"Perhaps so," said the Rambler, without one indication on his features that he was either frightened or moved by the suggestions. "I am long past the middle of life—my limbs are not quite so nimble as they once were—and if I do make a miss-step some time and get killed, I hope that they will allow me to lie peaceably where I fall!"
After which strange wish the conversation went no further. Breakfast was just breaking up; and a few moments afterwards some who were standing on the piazza saw the Rambler stepping away down the road, haversack of bread, cheese, and meats strapped under his left arm, and his weather-beaten slouched hat thrown forward to shield his eyes from the morning sun that came streaming low and broad up the Notch.
It was perhaps an hour afterwards when two wagons drew up at the door, ready to bear some score of the visitors up Mount Willard for the expected pic-nic. A third wagon had started ahead, bearing provisions enough to have supplied a small army—all to be wasted or made into perquisites for the servants by a frolic dictated a little by ennui and not a little by a love for any thing novel or merry. Two or three of the young men staying at the house had been up Mount Willard a few days before, and on their return they had brought such flattering accounts of a magnificent broad, green plateau which they had discovered (how many times it had before been discovered is not stated) not far from the end of the carriage-road, on the southern brow of the mountain and overlooking the cascades and the edge of the Devil's Den,—that the effect produced on the as yet untravelled people at the Crawford by the announcement was very much the same that we may suppose to have been manifested at the Court of Castile and Leon when Columbus came back with the Indians, the birds'-feathers and the big stories. The young men had signalized their own faith in the desirableness of the land as a place of permanent occupation, by possessing themselves of a small coil of inch rope, lying unused in one of the out-houses since the re-erection of the Crawford (after the fire of the winter before), in 1859, carting it in a wagon up the mountain and to the tempting plateau, and there using one end of it and a seat-board to make such a stupendous swing between two high trees that stood on one side of the green space, as had probably never been seen before in any locality where the clouds every morning tangled themselves among the branches. One of them had declared that he had the "highest old swing," in that "scup," ever taken by mortal, and a good many believed him. The swing, with its hundred feet or more of super-abundant rope, had remained as a permanence; a few of the ladies at the house had been coaxed into going up Mount Willard especially to indulge in that "scupping" which ordinarily belonged to low lands and lazier watering-places; and for two or three days before preparations and arrangements for a pic-nic had been in progress, destined to culminate on that splendid cloudless morning of early August.
So much premised, nothing more need be said than that all the few persons connected with this relation and yet remaining at the Crawford, were members of the pic-nic party of twenty or twenty-five, a pleasant mingling of both sexes but not of all the ages; that Captain Hector Coles and Margaret Hayley went up especially in each other's company, as was both usual and proper; that Mrs. Burton Hayley, getting ready to go on to the Glen and a little absorbed in one of the ministerial brethren whom she had found, did not ascend a mountain on any such vain and frivolous errand as a mere pic-nic; that Horace Townsend rode up, in a different wagon from that occupied by Margaret and her cavalier, and with no one in charge, or even in especial company—precisely as he had gone up Mount Washington; that the party, in both wagons, was very merry and tuned to the highest possible pitch of enjoyment; that the usual jolts incidental to very bad mountain roads were periodically encountered, and the little screams and jerkings at protecting coats, ordinarily consequent thereupon, were evoked; that a few magnificent views down the Notch and among the sea of peaks were enjoyed, with a few contretemps among the riders adding zest thereto; that nearly every one would have been willing to make oath that they had been "all but upset down the mountain" several times, when they had not really been even once in that threatening predicament; and that after something more than an hour of riding they found themselves and their pic-nic preparations at the end of the carriage-road and very near the diminutive promised land which they had been invited and enticed to come up and occupy.
It was indeed, as those who had never before visited the place found upon reaching it through a little clump of trees and bushes beyond the termination of the road—a spot well worthy the attention of any visitor to the Notch. Nothing else like it, probably, could have been found in the whole chain of the White Mountains, following them from the head waters of the Androscoggin to the mouth of the Pemigawasset. For the purposes of this veracious narration it becomes necessary to describe some of the features of the spot more closely than they would demand under ordinary circumstances; and the reader may find it equally necessary to make close application of the details of description, in order fully to appreciate that which must inevitably follow, beyond the control of either reader or writer.
At some day, no doubt many a long year before, whether caused by the melting of the snows at the top of the mountain or by some one of those internal convulsions which the earth seems to share with the human atom who inhabits it,—there had been a heavy "slide" from near the peak on the south-south-western side, coming down perhaps a quarter of a mile before earth and stone met with any check. Then the check had been sudden and severe, from some obstruction below, and as a consequence the slide had gone no farther downward but spread itself into a broad plateau of fifty or sixty feet by one hundred, nearly level though with a slight inclination downward towards the edge. There had chanced to be but few rocks at the top of this mass of earth, and the southern exposure and shelter from the north winds had no doubt tended to warm and fertilize it, so that while much of the top of the mountain was bald, scarred and bare, and all the remainder covered with wild, rough forest—this little plateau had really grown to be covered with grassy sward, of no particular luxuriance but quite a marvel at that bleak height. Behind it, upward, the mountain rose gradually towards the peak, seen through a younger growth of trees that had found their origin since the catastrophe which swept away all their predecessors. On both sides the thick tangled woods closed down heavily, leaving no view in either direction, except through their swaying branches; while in the direction of the slide itself, no tree intervening between the plateau and its edge, one of the most beautiful perspectives of the whole mountain range spread itself out to the admiring gaze.
Looking close as possible down the side of Mount Willard, at that point, the trees and undergrowth of the gorge below, some fifteen hundred or two thousand feet away, could be discerned, through that slight blue haze which marks distance and faintly suggests the great depth of the sky. Lifting the eye, it swept south-westward and took in a terribly rough range of wooded hills and minor mountain peaks, with a broad intervale lying between, through which glittered and flashed the little stream with its white cascades which gave name to the spot, hurrying down in foam and fury to join the Saco in the broad valley below. Further westward and at still greater distance rose the mountains lying behind Bethlehem, with the top of Lafayette, of the Franconia range, rising yet higher and beyond all, touched with the warm light of the noonday sun and supplying a perfect finish to what was truly an enchanting picture.
But at the edge of the plateau itself lay that which must command the most special notice in this connection. Whether formed before the slide or consequent upon it, one of the most precipitous of all the "schutes" of the mountains had its start at the very centre. It had worn away the earth of the plateau in the middle, until it reduced it nearly to the stone of the first formation; while at the side of the narrow trough thus formed, thick trees and undergrowth clustered as far down as the eye could extend, with one sharp bend outward at the right, and striking out still beyond that, the massive roots of a fallen tree, of which the trunk lay buried in the earth and covered with undergrowth, while one long thorn or fang of the root hung half way across the chasm and suggested that there of all places, above the dizzy depth beneath, one of those eagles should sit screaming, that are supposed ever to have kept position on some such outpost, shouting hoarse rage and defiance through far away and desolate Glencoe, ever since the massacre of the Macdonalds. Still below this and almost touching the stony bottom of the trough of the schute, another and much smaller fang of root extended, the broad bulk of the side-roots forming a close wall between the two branches and the hedge of undergrowth, almost as impervious to the hand of man and as unfavorable for any purpose of clinging, as the sloping stone itself. It was a dizzy thing to look down—that schute, as some of the stronger-sexed, clearer-headed and surer-footed of the pic-nic party found by venturing near the edge, and as they did not feel it necessary to reassure themselves by any second examination.
The baskets and hampers had been brought over from the baggage-wagon, at the same time that the party themselves made their arrival. Why it is that people who go out upon pic-nics, in any part of the country or indeed in any part of the globe, with high expectations of much enjoyment which is to be found in other modes than the use of the masticative apparatus,—why it is, we say, that all such persons, even though they may have eaten heartily not two hours before, become ravenously hungry the very moment they reach the ground designated and are good for nothing thereafter until they have rendered themselves helpless by over-eating,—why all this is, we say once more, passes human understanding; but the fact remains not the less patent. Let any frequenter of pic-nics think backward and try whether he or she can remember any instance to the contrary,—and whether the conclusion has not been more than once arrived at, in his or her particular mind, that the true aim and object of the pic-nic, as an institution, is to enjoy the eating of a bad dinner away from the ordinary table instead of a good one properly spread upon it.
The party on Mount Willard was mortal, and they bowed at once to this unaccountable weakness of mortality. Five minutes of inspecting the ground and viewing the scenery; and then, while the more selfish members of the company or those who had eaten heartier breakfasts, flirted, strolled, or indulged in the doubtful pleasures of the swing (which hung between two tall trees at the left of the plateau, with a loose hundred feet of rope at the root of one), the less selfish or the more hungry applied themselves to spreading out on the dry sward the half dozen of cloths that had been brought up from the hotel, and to laying out upon it, in various stages and phases of damage and disarrangement, eatables which had been appetizing enough when they left the Crawford, but of which, now, they would have been seriously puzzled to separate the fish from the farina or the maccaroni from the mustard.
The helpful ladies and their male assistants had just succeeded in producing that amount of confusion among the articles on the spread table-cloths which was supposed to represent arranging the lunch,—and the call for volunteers to disarrange it more effectually with forks and fingers was about to be made,—when one of the gentlemen looked up suddenly as a shadow passed him.
"Our friend the Rambler," he said as the other, with a slight nod, recognized his notice and passed on down the plateau towards the thicket at the north-western edge.
"Why yes," said one of the ladies. "He walked and we rode, and yet he seems to have been up before us, for he is coming down from the farthest side of the mountain."
"Shall I call him and ask him to take a share in our dinner?" asked one of the male stewards.
"No, it would be useless: the Rambler, they say, generally chooses his own society, and he probably would not even thank us for the invitation," answered another. The strange man had by that time passed into the thicket bordering the edge of the schute at the right, and was seen no longer. Some of the pic-nickers noticed, as he passed, that he had no stick in his hands and that his almost invariable companion, the haversack, was missing from his side. But there seemed to be no occasion of commenting on so slight a matter, and nothing was said with reference to it.
It must be confessed that among those who had not contributed in any way to the spreading of the miscellaneous dinner upon the ground, were two persons in whom this narration maintains a peculiar interest—Horace Townsend, lawyer, and Margaret Hayley, gentlewoman. The lady had been among the early visitors to the swing; and at the time of the disappearance of the Rambler into the thicket at the edge of the schute, she was being swept backward and forward in the air by that dizzying contrivance, at a rate which sent her loosened wealth of dark hair and her light summer drapery floating about in equal negligence and profusion, while the dainty white hands held fast to the rope with a tenacity which showed them to possess a commendable degree of nerve, and the trim dark gaiter enclosing her Arab foot, and the spotless stocking that rose above it, had both just that measure of display which preserved the extremest bound of delicacy and yet made the whole spectacle strangely bewitching. Perhaps the extraordinary light in her eye as she swung may have been a little influenced by one of the two pairs of hands that supplied the careful impelling force; for those hands certainly belonged to the lawyer, who had been a member of the idle section from the beginning, while she had wilfully attached herself to it in spite of the expostulations of the Captain. That gallant officer, by the way, had been retained among the dinner-purveyors by the wiles and the threats of a little dark-eyed minx from Providence, who cared no more for him than she did for her shoe-lace, but who would flirt with him and make him flirt with her, because she saw that he was arrogant, shoulder-strapped, and very much afraid of being seen for a moment absent from the side of Margaret Hayley. The Captain, who was not quite fool enough to believe that he had really made a military conquest of the young Yankee girl, probably objurgated her in his heart for her charming impudence; while Margaret, more gratified by the relief than she cared to make manifest, may have made private calculations of hugging that dear little tormentor the first moment when she could catch her alone.
Such was the aspect of affairs—the young girl in the swing, Townsend and another gentleman swinging her, half a dozen merry young men and girls gathered around the trees or lying lazily on the grass, and the other and more industrious half-score kneeling and bending and squatting around the table-cloths at U. C. of the plateau,—when the arrangements (or mis-arrangements) were judged to be complete and one of the male members of the working-detail, a little hungry and disposed to be more than a little witty, made up one hand into the shape of a trumpet and bawled through it:
"Oh yes,—oh yes!—know all men and several women by these presents that the regal banquet is spread and that those who intend to eat are required to eat now or ever after hold their pieces—if they can find any to hold!"
A merry farce—the very incarnation of thoughtless jollity,—the dinner and the announcement. It rung out over the plateau, heard by all and certain to be heeded by all; to be succeeded the very instant after by a sound that no member of that company will ever forget until his dying day. A scream of mortal agony and terror that seemed to rise from the depths of the schute, nondescript in some respects, as unlike what any one then present had ever heard, but unmistakably human because the last sounds of every repetition shaped themselves into words that could be distinguished:
"Help!—help!—help!"
For one moment that fearful cry ceased and during that moment all was silence among the pic-nickers. For that instant, too, probably more than half the company believed that whatever the sound might be, it was the prank of some unscrupulous joker, hidden away in the undergrowth near the edge of the schute and intended to frighten the ladies out of any appetite for their dinner. The time of its coming, immediately following the dinner-call, was certainly favorable to that supposition. But when it commenced again, the very instant after, louder and more shrill, so evidently coming up from the depth below, the thought of practical jest vanished and every cheek grew deadly white with the certainty that some tragedy was being enacted near them, that human eye must be blasted by seeing and that human hand could probably find no power to avert.
It would have seemed the most unlikely of all things, when that ambiguous banquet on the top of the mountain was spread, that it should never be eaten; and yet the fates had so destined. Old Ancæus had quite as little faith in the prediction of the slave whom he overworked in his vineyard, that he should never taste of the product of the vines; and when he held the cup in his hand and the red wine was bubbling to the brim, ready to show the audacious prophet the fallacy of his prediction, the muttered: "There's many a slip between the cup and the lip!" no doubt fell upon incredulous ears. But even then the cry rang out that called him to the Hunt of the Calydonian Boar, and the spirit of the warrior was higher than the pride of the wine-grower and the hard master. The heavy cup went clanging to the earth, the blood of the grape flowing out to enrich once more the ground from which it had been derived; and the tyrant hero rushed away. The slaves had a new master, thereafter; and though Ancæus may have supped with the gods on Olympus, on the night when the great fight was over, he never tasted of that wine of his vineyard which had once even been lifted to his lips! So tasted not the diners on that mountain in a far distant land from that which held Olympus, even when the feast was spread and the call had been made for their gathering.
It is impossible to say what point of time elapsed before any member of that horrified company remembered the Rambler, his habits, the conversation of that morning, and the fact that he had only a few moments before been seen going in the direction from which that piteous cry was coming up. It is impossible to measure it, for at such moments ages of sensation pass in the very twinkling of an eye. Some of them did remember him, with a groan, and perhaps the thought was general. At all events the consternation was so—as general as if some one who had come away from the Crawford with them in life and high hope, had suddenly been stricken dead before their eyes. Margaret Hayley, with the frightened cry which even then shaped a feeling: "Oh, Mr. Townsend, what can that be!" dropped from the swing and was caught in arms outstretched to receive her. By that time all seated around the table-cloths had sprung to their feet; and at once every member of the party, male and female, impelled by a curiosity that even overmastered fear, rushed down the plateau towards the edge, as if some horrible madness had seized all and they were about to spring off into the great chasm below. But before they had reached the edge all the ladies except two and several of the gentlemen recoiled; and it was only by degrees and under the compelling attraction of that still ascending cry, that some of those remaining could force themselves to the verge. Those who reached it at that moment, and those who closed up the instant after, saw enough to make Blondin and his brother-fools a non-necessity for the balance of their natural lives; and the cry from below was answered, be sure, by a cry that rang from every voice above when the sad spectacle met the eye.
It was indeed the subject of their past fear who supplied their present horror; and the situation, keeping in view previous descriptions of the locality, may be briefly conveyed.
It will be remembered that at the bend or elbow of the gulch, some thirty feet below, two fangs of the root of a tree stretched out partially across the chasm, the upper long and at some distance from the rock of the bottom, the other shorter and lying very near it. It will also be remembered that beneath both the schute stretched its long blue jagged line to the foot of the mountain, not less than fifteen hundred or two thousand feet, with the air between the top and bottom looking actually blue from distance,—and that the schute itself was so nearly perpendicular that while any object falling down it would probably touch it all the way from top to bottom, it would go down almost with the velocity of the lightning and be rolled and pounded to a mere ball before it had accomplished half of the descent.
On that lower fang of the root hung the Rambler—those who had seen him at the Crawford recognized him at once, at that short distance; and it was indeed from that throat so little accustomed to call for assistance from any mortal hand, that the terrible cries of agony and appeals for help were ascending. One hand grasped the root near the end, without being able to go nearly round it, and one leg was caught round the root farther towards the tree, with the bend at the knee forming a kind of hook so long as it could retain its tension. The other arm and leg hung down, with the body, below, and the long grizzled hair streamed away from the head that depended downward in the direction towards which it seemed to be so fatally tending. The face could be seen, as that was turned towards the cliff, but its expression could not be recognized at that distance and in the reversed position that it occupied. All that could be known, to any certainty, was that there hung a human being, evidently unable even to recover a safer hold upon the root, screaming for help that was hopeless, and as certain to make the last plunge within a space of time that could be measured by single minutes, or perhaps even by seconds, as the sun was certain to move on in its course and the earth to retain its laws of gravitation!
Was there not cause, indeed, for that general cry of pitying horror from above, which answered the cry of agony and terror from below?