A few rods from their narrow perch was an eagle’s nest, and it made the head giddy and the pulse beat fast to see the great birds float out over the abyss. Coiling along the very base of the precipices was the river, a silken thread of twisted white and emerald.
But oh! the Falls. Here the Yellowstone gathered itself, at the head of the Cañon, and leaped abroad into the air, falling three hundred feet before it knitted together its torn threads on the rocks below.
“In His hands are the deep places of the earth,” murmured Mr. Percival, half to himself.
“The strength of the hills is His also!” finished the young clergyman, involuntarily baring his head, as if in the visible presence of the Creator.
“How can He—how can He think of our little every-day-nesses, and of that!” said Bess, not turning to the last speaker, but knowing that he heard.
Rossiter stooped, picked a single blade of grass from the brink of the awful cataract, and handed it to her without a word. And she understood, and was grateful.
[CHAPTER XV.]
WHITE LILIES.
“Home again, from a foreign shore!” sang the Percival Glee Club, as the mountain wagon rattled down a long hill, across a dusty plain, and whirled up to the front door of a great hotel. It wasn’t home, really, but only the Mammoth Hot Springs, which they had left nearly a week before.