"Are you mad, Gipsy?" he cried, seizing her bridle-rein and forcing her back. "One false step, and your brains would be dashed out against the rocks."
But, fixing her eyes on the dark chasm, she answered him only by a wild, prolonged shriek, so full of piercing anguish that his blood seemed curdling in his veins, while, with bloodless face and quivering finger, she pointed to the gulf.
He leaped from his horse and approached the dizzy edge. And there a sight met his eyes that froze his heart with horror.
"Great God!" he cried, springing back, with a face deadly white. "A horse and rider lie dead and mangled below!"
A deadly faintness came over Gipsy; the ground seemed reeling around her, and countless stars danced before her eyes. For a moment she was on the verge of swooning, then by a powerful effort the tide of life rolled back, and she leaped from her horse and stood by his side.
"It is impossible to reach the bottom," cried Archie, in a voice low with horror. "A cat could hardly clamber down those perpendicular sides."
"I can do it, Archie; I often went up and down there when a child," exclaimed Gipsy; and ere Archie could restrain her, the fearless girl had caught hold of a stunted spruce tree and swung herself over the edge of the appalling gorge.
Archie Rivers scarcely breathed; he felt as though he scarcely lived while she rapidly descended by catching the matted shrubs growing along its sides. She was down at last, and bending over the mangled form below.
"Gipsy! Gipsy! do you recognize him?" cried Archie.
She looked up, and he saw a face from which every trace of life seemed to have fled.