Gray reached Daintry's Corner before noon on the following day. For some miles before reaching his destination his road had lain through a deep narrow gorge, with gigantic walls on each side of almost perpendicular rock. Much of the rock was bare, and of a sullen, cheerless brown, but here and there trees sprang out of hollows and showed green against the rock, and dark-leaved climbing plants flung their long arms from crevice to crevice, and hung in gloomy wreaths along the broken ground.
The morning had come with sunshine and gentle breezes, but no sunshine reached this frowning ravine, and the air there was damp, and heavy, and close.
The ravine had run in an almost straight line for some miles, and Gray was beginning to weary for its end, when he suddenly checked his horse with a start of amazement and dismay. Some few hundred yards before him the ravine apparently came to a full stop. A great precipice rose up before him closing up the end of the gorge—a precipice far too steep for any track to run over it.
Gray began to think he had come to a cul de sac, and that he should be obliged to retrace his steps, but before doing so he determined to ride on to the foot of the precipice before him and examine the ground carefully.
A new surprise awaited him there. He found that the gorge took a sudden turn here, in fact, ran on at right angles to its former course, though considerably narrower and closed in by walls of rock higher and gloomier than ever.
The bottom of this new part of the gorge was not open and grassy, but studded thickly with enormous trees clad in dark heavy foliage. It was a gloomy spot to enter, and Gray hesitated; yet it was evident the track went this way. There was the mark of a horse's footstep just before him, freshly made too!
Gray's eyes fell on this as he was looking along the ground, and he sprang off his horse to more closely examine it. Some one had evidently passed here quite lately. As Gray looked he saw that the footsteps ceased a short way up the glen, and that when they ceased the ground was slightly broken away as if horse and rider had tried to climb the cliff. With a rush of sudden, unexplainable terror, Gray looked up the steep impassable wall of rock. Horse and rider had gone that way! But how?—and for what purpose? He listened intently, but no sound came to his ear that spoke of a living presence. An oppressive silence reigned on every side.
Gray was no coward, but the blood forsook his cheek and his knees trembled under him. Who was it that was haunting him thus? He dared not make any answer to himself. He dared not stay longer in that dark and silent spot. Taking his horse by the bridle he led him hastily onwards, picking his way with difficulty through the mighty tree-trunks and among the wave-worn boulders that lay between them. The trees grew so near together that it was impossible to see more than a yard or so ahead.
Gray was stumbling blindly on, with the belief growing in him that the gorge was impassable, and that he would be forced to go back past that spot in the cliffs which chilled him to think of; when suddenly the light grew brighter through the trees, a keen breeze blew upon his face; in a few steps, the trees ended, and the gorge ceased. Gray found himself standing on a rocky platform commanding a glorious view. There lay the hills, rising range after range before him, bathed in the sunshine of early noon. It was a wonderful prospect—a sight to make one's heart leap up; and Gray stood entranced, drinking in all its beauty, forgetting himself and his errand.
But not for long. He had soon to consider his path; and, as he looked round him with that purpose in his mind, all the glory seemed to die out of the scene, and his pleasure in it passed away. For this must be Daintry's Corner, Gray concluded. He must be very near the end of his journey.