“This is foolish, foolhardy, wicked, Philippa.”
“I know it is, but I cannot help it. Something draws me on, I tell you!” exclaimed the willful creature. And at the same moment she stumbled, recovered herself, and held the candle close to the ground to see what the obstacle had been.
“Oh, gracious Heaven, what is this?” cried Philippa, in a tone of sickening horror, as she recoiled from the object.
“What is it?” whispered Gloria, in a frightened voice.
“Look! Look!” gasped Philippa.
Gloria caught the candle from the girl’s shaking hand, held it down, peered into the obscurity, and instantly sprang back with a piercing shriek.
They were on the very brink of a black torrent that rushed along through the depths of a deep and yawning gulch. Another moment—another step, and they must have plunged down the precipice into the dark water of that buried river, and been whirled on to destruction in the darkest depths of the abyss.
But it was not even that impending doom that had appalled them!
It was the dire object that rose from the earth on the bank of the chasm!
For a moment they stood clinging together, half petrified, and then, without a word, turned and fled to the foot of the ladder, and climbed it with tumultuous haste. On reaching the cellar over this cavern, they hurried across it to the door leading up stairs to the back building communicating with the house.