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270 run in it. I ran all this way with the ferns on my back I brought for you.”

“Oh, did you?” gasped Ramona, diverted, for the moment, from her contemplation of the abyss, and more reassured by that change of her thoughts than she could have been by anything else. “Did you? It is frightful, Alessandro. I never heard of such a trail. I feel as if I were on a rope in the air. If I could get down and go on my hands and knees, I think I would like it better. Could I?”

“I would not dare to have you get off, just here, Majella,” answered Alessandro, sorrowfully. “It is dreadful to me to see you suffer so; I will go very slowly. Indeed, it is safe; we all came up here, the whole band, for the sheep-shearing,—old Fernando on his horse all the way.”

“Really,” said Ramona, taking comfort at each word, “I will try not to be so silly. Is it far, dearest Alessandro?”

“Not much more as steep as this, dear, nor so narrow; but it will be an hour yet before we stop.”

But the worst was over for Ramona now, and long before they reached the bottom of the precipice she was ready to laugh at her fears; only, as she looked back at the zigzag lines of the path over which she had come,—little more than a brown thread, they seemed, flung along the rock,—she shuddered.

Down in the bottom of the cañon it was still the dusky gloaming when they arrived. Day came late to this fairy spot. Only at high noon did the sun fairly shine in. As Ramona looked around her, she uttered an exclamation of delight, which satisfied Alessandro. “Yes,” he said, “when I came here for the ferns, I wished to myself many times that you could see it. There is not in all this country so beautiful a place. This is our first home, my Majella,” he added, in a tone almost solemn; and throwing his arms