I thought I had loved dear Dan before that with all the love my poor little woman's heart could hold. No. The deepest love is only born of the deepest suffering. There are chords of love whose music joy can never waken. Since then Dan is to me more than he ever was, more than he ever could have been, had not our souls passed together that moment of agony.
I do not know how long we stood thus, neither daring to go to the brink of the precipice and look over. Baby and Dixie must be both lying dead on the rocks below. At last Dan mustered up courage enough to say to me,
"It is all over, darling. God is good."
"God is good," I repeated; "but, O Dan, dear! it is a cruel blow."
"For us to bear, Tot, for us to bear; but not for him to give—no, not for him to give."
He seemed to wring the words from his noble Christian heart, as if he tore away his very life and offered it to God.
"Stay here, Tot," said he, "I am strong enough now." But his whole body trembled from head to foot, and his voice was hoarse and broken. "I will go and look."
I feared to let him go. Yet why should I detain him? But I could not watch him. Throwing myself upon the ground, I buried my face in my hands, and gave way to floods of bitter, bitter tears.
I had not lain thus a moment, when I heard a sharp, piercing cry. Raising my head in alarm, to my unutterable surprise and horror, I saw Dan spring over the edge of the Palisades and disappear. Again I heard him cry as before, "Ba—by!" but there was now a tone of joy mingled with that of fear, which told me that the child was not dead. It was a brief instant that I was on my knees, it is true, it was nothing more than a look of gratitude I gave to God; but he knows that not all the language ever expressed by man could fully tell all that thought of thanksgiving which my soul sent up to him, as I raised my clasped hands to the cloudless sky.
In a moment I was at the edge of the Palisades, just where that ragged, rocky line runs down its front, jutting out here and there in rough ledges. There was a story of a man who, being pursued by the officers of justice, had clambered down there and escaped. Few people who saw the place believed it. The very first rock that jutted out was ten feet from the top, and that did not present more than two or three feet of surface. A little to the right of this, and about three feet lower, was another, on which a man might easily stand, but not for any length of time, as its surface shelved outward, and the rock overhanging it above would not allow him to stand perfectly upright. Any one who had gotten thus far must perforce take his chances of clambering down the rest or be precipitated head foremost below, to certain death.