She sighed, and stepped into the embrasure, and stood there waiting, with an oppression at her heart that robbed the moment of all its expected joy. The two natives sat near, calm and unmoved, perhaps marvelling at the strange ways of these restless white people.
“What do you see?” asked Hume anxiously, to make her talk, so that she should not hear him moan with the pain he suffered.
“I see the rocks on my right, the outlines of the mountains beyond, a tremulous light around, but below it is jet black. No—there is a faint luminous track winding through the blackness.”
“That is the layer of mist over the river.”
“There is a glow on the summits of the distant mountains; and, oh! above me, on the rocks, there is the reflection as from fire. It is the sunlight streaming, and it stretches out, fan-shaped, pouring its radiance down into the darkness in countless quivering threads of silver.”
“Follow that gleam,” he cried; “don’t let your gaze wander.”
“It is shivered by a projecting rock on the mountain side,” she continued; “but the centre broadens out and flows on deeper and deeper, the darkness flying before it, and now there is a lake lying far below; no, it is land, I think—rolling prairie, and oh!”
“What—what?”
“Come and look at this—a gleaming spot far off, that glows like the heart of a furnace. Give me your hand.”
“No; I am tired. Laura, that is the rock; look well at it.”