Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/205

1885] den jumps, in a way which paths in general do not affect. She had to steady herself by the rocks, for the stones slipped under her feet; each step sent a shower of small boulders chasing each other down the pathway.

Again there was a sound, high above her this time, and she stood still to listen. It was only the voice of an eagle, roused out of its first sleep, and scolding the intruder who dared to penetrate this solitude.

What beautiful spot was this she had come to? wondered Gretchen, as she looked around her; so beautiful, that it almost made her forget her fright. The wall of rock on each side had retreated for a little space, and here, before her eyes, lay a circular basin, rippling in living green waves. And yet there was no drop of water here; the waves were only the leaves of wild hartstongue ferns which filled the hollow to overflowing, curving over each other in graceful arches, and crowding up to the foot of the overhanging rock. Each glossy leaf, with delicately crimped edge, rose and fell as softly as a swelling wave. More than one sharp stone reared its head right through the midst of the green pool.

Gretchen looked round her, and paused in spite of herself; she could hear her own heart-beats in the solemn silence. But she dared not linger, she traversed the oval space, walking through the midst of the waving hartstongue, and then the rocks narrowed again, and the track dipped down steeper than before. It must be a very short cut indeed, she thought, as she waded through tangles of green fern; it was all she could do to feel her way down under the thick overgrowth which masked the passage. There were dead tree-trunks across her way, and bramble-branches straggling over them. The gorge narrowed every moment, until her steps struck a hollow echo in the enclosed passage, and the air grew strangely chill. Now there was hardly room for her to pass between the two walls. In another moment she half expected her passage to be barred, when all at once it widened again, and at the same moment Gretchen found herself suddenly brought up.

It would be a very short cut indeed to reach the Hercules Baths this way; for at her feet there fell a precipice sheer and straight. At the two sides of the gorge's mouth, the mass of rock jutted forward a little. One or two flat-topped stone-pines, like gigantic umbrellas in shape, and sombre to blackness in the evening light, flung themselves boldly forward, their twisted roots clinging to the naked stone, while the fading sky behind sharply set off each line of branch and trunk.

This was the rock at the foot of which lay the Cursalon, and this gorge was the narrow slit Gretchen had so often looked at from below. The path she had followed was nothing but the stony bed which a winter torrent had left dry, and which the green hartstongue had usurped in place of the mountain stream. The Hercules Baths lay at her feet; the Cursalon and the monster hotels turned up their roofs towards her. She was close to them and yet inseparably divided. She could count the windows of the houses opposite; she could even hear the band of music playing, and distinguish the voices of the people; but she would have to retrace the whole way she had come before she could be at home. With a shudder, the thought flashed upon her that this was the gorge which even from below people looked at in terror; it was here that the robbers had been seen