“That is the leap you were so desirous of taking. We found you dangling against yonder rock.”
“Good God!” I ejaculated, as my eyes rested upon the dizzy eminence. My brain grew giddy as I sat in my saddle gazing upward, and I was fain to ride onward.
“But for your noble horse,” continued my companion, “the doctor here would have been stopping about this time to hypothecate upon your bones. Ho, Moro! beautiful Moro!”
“Oh, mein Gott! Ya, ya!” assented the botanist, looking up against the precipice, apparently with a feeling of awe such as I felt myself.
Seguin had ridden alongside me, and was patting my horse on the neck with expressions of admiration.
“But why?” I asked, the remembrance of our first interview now occurring to me, “why were you so eager to possess him?”
“A fancy.”
“Can I not understand it? I think you said then that I could not?”
“Oh, yes! Quite easily, monsieur. I intended to steal my own daughter, and I wanted, for that purpose, to have the aid of your horse.”
“But how?”