Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/202



burned with impatience to know the condition of my family, to dissipate at once their tormenting doubts and my own with regard to our mutual safety: the evil that I feared had befallen them was too enormous to allow me to repose in suspense; and my restlessness and ominous forebodings would be more intolerable than any hardship or toils to which I could possibly be subjected during this journey.

I was much refreshed and invigorated by the food that I had taken, and by the rest of an hour; with this stock of recruited force I determined to scale the hill. After receiving minute directions, and returning many thanks for my hospitable entertainment, I set out.

The path was indeed intricate, and deliberate attention was obliged to be exerted in order to preserve it; hence my progress was slower than I wished. The first impulse was to fix my eye upon the summit, and to leap from crag to crag till I reached it; but this my experience had taught me was impracticable: it was only by winding through gullies, and coasting precipices and bestriding chasms, that I could hope finally to gain the top; and I was assured that by one way only was it possible to accomplish even this.

An hour was spent in struggling with impediments, and I seemed to have gained no way; hence a doubt was suggested whether I had not missed the true road: in this doubt I was confirmed by the difficulties which now grew up before me. The brooks, the angles, and the hollows which my hostess had described, were not to be seen; instead of these, deeper dells, more headlong torrents, and wider gaping rifts were incessantly encountered.

To return was as hopeless as to proceed. I consoled myself with thinking that the survey which my informant had made of the hill-side might prove inaccurate; and that, in spite of her predictions, the heights might be reached by other means than by those pointed out by her. I will not enumerate my toilsome expedients, my frequent