Unconscious of being followed and overheard, they talked freely of their plans. Their prospects of final escape were not now nearly so hopeful as they had been on their two former attempts. They were now undisguised, and unprovided for the journey, except with money and a change of clothing. For necessary food they would have to stop at houses, and thus incur some degree of danger. All this they discussed as their horses slowly toiled along the rugged road up hill and down, through woods and fields, until they came near that mountain pass that they had been dimly seeing before them all night long and that looked like a grey cleft in a black wall. "It must be near morning now. But I have not a very clear idea where we are. I shall be glad when it is light if it is only to consult my map and compass," said Lyon, uneasily. "I never was on this side of the mountain before, but it does seem to me that that must be a spur of the Black Ridge which we see before us," suggested Sybil. "I was thinking the very same thing," added Lyon. "But if that is so, we must have wandered far out of our way." "And hush! Don't you hear something?" inquired Sybil, when they had ridden a little farther on. "No; what is it?" "Listen! I want to know if you recognize it," she said. "I hear a faint, distant roaring, as of a water-fall," he answered, stopping his horse to hear the better. "It is our Black Torrent!" exclaimed Sybil. "Good Heaven! Then we have wandered out of our way with a vengeance. However, there is no help for it now! We must go on, or stop here until it is light enough to consult the compass." "And at any rate, Lyon, no one will think of looking for us so near home," she added. "That is true," he admitted. And they rode on slowly, looking about as well as they could through the darkness, for a convenient place on which to dismount from the jaded steeds. Their path now lay through that deep mountain pass. Steep precipices arose on either side. They picked their way slowly and carefully through it, until they entered a crooked path leading down the side of a thickly wooded hill. Here they rode on, a little more at their ease, until they reached the bottom of the hill and the edge of the wood, and came out upon an old forsaken road, running along the shores of a deep and rapid river, with another mountain range behind. "Well, Heaven bless us! here we are!" exclaimed Lyon Berners, reining up his horse and looking around himself in a ludicrous state of mind, made up of surprise, dismay, and resignation. "Yes; on the shores of the Black River, at the head of our own Black Valley," chimed in Sybil, in a tone of voice in which there was more of satisfaction than of disappointment. Poor Sybil was sentimental and illogical, like all her sex.