Page:A New England Tale.djvu/151

140 "Nay, there is no other way; follow me, and fear not."

Jane had often heard of the pass called the 'Mountain-Caves,' and she knew it had only been penetrated by a few rash youths of daring and adventurous spirit. She was appalled at the thought of entering it in the dead of night, and with such a conductor; she paused, but she could see no way of escape, and summoning all her resolution to her aid, she followed Bet, who took no note of her scruples. They now entered a defile, which had been made by some tremendous convulsion of nature, that had rent the mountain asunder, and piled rock on rock in the deep abyss. The breadth of the passage, which was walled in by the perpendicular sides of the mountain, was not in any place more than twenty feet; and sometimes so narrow, that Jane thought she might have extended her arms quite across it. But she had no leisure for critical accuracy; her wayward guide pressed on, heedless of the difficulties of the way. She would pass between huge rocks, that had rolled so near together, as to leave but a very narrow passage between them; then grasping the tangled roots that projected from the side of the mountain, and placing her feet in the fissures of the rocks, or in the little channels that had been worn by the continual dropping from the mountain rills, she would glide over swiftly and safely, as if she had been on the beaten highway. They were sometimes compelled, in the depths of the caverns, to prostrate themselves and creep through narrow