We crept to a ledge just wide enough for a horse.

mountain, and approached the rock, behind which Tom had vanished. I fairly held my breath as I crept around it, and coaxed that horse of mine to venture after me. Then I gasped, as I surveyed the next proposition. It was like the places called Devil's Slides, but this was a baby one, about eighteen or twenty feet high, perhaps, with jagged, jutting rocks on either side. That Tom had taken his horse up there simply filled me with amazement, but there they were serenely looking down on us. I thought of what Mark Twain had said about bicycling: "I have seen it done; but it is impossible it doesn't stand to reason."

"Did you ride up?" I asked with

sarcasm.

He grinned and suggested that I try it that way; but the horse and I ignored the suggestion. Then he grew serious.

"Creep under the horse's head." I crept under.

"Now you have more room where you are; and if your horse should slip when he attempts to come up, you won't be under him. But don't do anything until you are confident that you can do it without failure. Throw the bridle over his head and be sure that it goes over, then start him up, and get out of the way as quick as you can yourself, for he may start a stone."

"What if he has some sense and won't go?"

"Oh, he knows there is 'Room at the top'-he will come up because mine is up here, if for no other reason."

Over went the bridle-a spat on the flank-up went the horse-and away scuttled I-but not a bit too soon, for he did loosen a stone, which I dodged in time, though I carried some bruised wrists for a few days.

It was now Dorothy's turn to join the cliff-dwellers; and she slid around that aggressive rock; then came the head of her horse, then his shoulders, and finally he shuffled into place. But it agitated him to see his fellows higher in the world than himself, and emulation to do likewise filled him instantly; as if he were a vacuum. He waited not on the order of his going, but jerked away, and started up before Dorothy could adjust herself at all.

It was a horrible moment; his foot could not fail to go through that hanging bridle, and that would be the last of him for this hideous place sloped directly into that gorge hundreds of feet deep-and Dorothy was right under him. Such a whoa was never yelled at a horse before. Tom dropped down like a shot, caught that bridle and threw it over

was almost as bad, not a tree or bush to arrest, if one should once start to roll. I thought of a high bridge without protecting sides, tilting obliquely up into space-and our trail went up over it.

We climbed on the backs of those horses once more, and boldly rode out on it. It was the steepest place we had ridden so far. It rained harder than ever, and our sloping railless bridge narrowed and narrowed. It was not more than ten or twelve feet wide, when our trail stopped at an old mining shaft. It was backed by a barrier of rock, and up and beyond it was the final top, crowned with some stanch old pines, spectral in the mist, and gnarled and distorted by their fights for life; but their very deformity was their supreme beauty.

"Well, this is a finish! A midsummer night's dream!" quoth Tom.

We could hardly realize that across the abysmal space below twinkled those lode-stars, the Arcady lights. But we were paying heavy toll. Tom tossed his rein to Dorothy and hurried back on foot to see if we could have missed the way over. How it rained while we sat there on those horses. They shifted their positions, and turned their backs to the loosed storm. It drove in sheets. We had long ago reached the saturation point; no hy grometer could have measured that moisture. It was one of "The great rains of his strength." Old as time. but vigorous as youth. The raking masts of pine reeled like drunkards through the driving spray; I had

never heard such thunder, for we were right in Thor's old forge. One after another stupendous, whelming crashes made the echoes reverberate.

over

It was regal. A chaos of sublime majesty; a glorious nocturne, interpreted by the irresistible orchestra of nature. All our unexpressed secrets of life, misty, dispersed and vague, were sounded for us, as it

How it rained as we sat there!

terse statement to us in the driving rain.

Our water-soaked cavalcade took up the line of march once more, carefully picking our way around the old mine, and rode our steepest ride in the face of the storm.

"We can cross over here, but we cannot ride; keep cool-don't look down-and you are perfectly safe." Tom's tone, though, was too cool and controlled to be reassuring.

Notwithstanding all my very recent experiences, I felt a twinge of nerves, as I stepped or rather crawled over to a ledge, just wide enough for a horse, and no protection between its slippery edges and the silent, gloomy chasm below. My brother-in-leash weighed the consequences of each step with the deliberation of a philosopher, for, poor fellow, he couldn't flatten himself and crawl. Then came Dorothy wriggling over, and we were on the home side, at least; but wonder swelled our hearts to know whether we were on anything that we could get down from, even if the tails of the horses were skyward now instead of their heads.

The rain had ceased somewhat by this time, but the ledge was as slippery as grease from it. It was too dangerous to attempt to lead the animals down; so we started them ahead of us, to follow Tom's. They followed while the ledge held out, because they could not do otherwise; but whether the provoking things had become rattled with our sophistry of action or giddy from the shocking spiral of their recent climb, anyway no sooner were they off that perch than they wavered and strayed at random, haphazard, and it was hurry-scurry to catch them again.

For about ten minutes we skated and slid downward, bravely endeavoring in the impetuous career to locate the upper sides of our charges. We were coasting down a ridge, and soon came to the end of it. Nothing in front and to the right

but empty space as usual; and across it beamed our beacons, the lights of home. A great ghost of a cloud drifted by at our feet, and hid them for a moment.

"I hope the people over there won't go to bed for a while," sighed Dorothy. "What fools we can be when we set our whole minds to it," she mused philosophically.

The left came to our rescue once more in an alluring drop of at least forty feet. The enticing angle of this declivity, not at it's utmost limit more than forty-five degrees. We were intoxicated with our own wills from Victor Hugo's standpoint, and nothing but a direct precipice could have hindered us in our lofty tumbling.

It was as exciting as a race to the probationers above, to see the leader go down, to watch that jostle and tussle with the total depravity of hills, for every foot of the tortuous way was disputed. It required dexterity, adroitness, skill, vigilance. The second horse was easier to manage than the first, for Dorothy could help, and mine still easier for all three of us enlisted, but even the easiest required some nerve, for when all three and the horse were ploughing and scouring the face of the hill, the stones rolled like cannon-balls. And when we did reach the bottom, we narrowly escaped falling into an old pitfall of a mining shaft.

It was too dark to see the raven thing, but she heard the chink of a piece of metal on his bridle and I bumped into her leading the erring creature down. I had passed within a foot of him, and had not seen nor heard him.

We followed directly behind each other now, for it was so dark we could not see the dangers nor pitfalls that might be lurking for us in the skulking shadows. Ton would explore, then we would follow. We were in fantastic realms of shadows. It was down over rocks; the dropmight be three or four inches, or a.