The pedler made sundry efforts to procure a companion for his adventure; but finding it vain, and determined to do right, he grew more resolute with the necessity, and, contenting himself with claiming the guidance of Chub, he went boldly on the path. Having reached a certain point in the woods, after a very circuitous departure from the main track, the guide pointed out to the pedler a long and rude ledge of rocks, so rude, so wild, that none could have ever conjectured to find them the abode of anything but the serpent and the wolf. But there, according to the idiot, was Lucy Munro concealed. Chub gave the pedler his directions, then alighting from his nag, which he concealed in a clump of neighboring brush, hastily and with the agility of a monkey ran up a neighboring tree which overhung the prospect. Bunce, left alone, grew somewhat staggered with his fears. He now half-repented of the self-imposed adventure; wondered at his own rash humanity, and might perhaps have utterly forborne the trial, but for a single consideration. His pride was concerned, that the deformed Chub should not have occasion to laugh at his weakness. Descending, therefore, from his horse, he fastened him to the hanging branch of a neighboring tree, and with something of desperate defiance in his manner, resolutely advanced to the silent and forbidding mass of rocks, which rose up so sullenly around him. In another moment, and he was lost to sight in the gloomy shadow of the entrance-passage pointed out to him by the half-witted, but not altogether ignorant dwarf. CHAPTER XXXI. THE ROCK CASTLE OF THE ROBBERS. But the preparations of Bunce had been foreseen and provided for by those most deeply interested in his progress; and scarcely had the worthy tradesman effected his entrance fairly into the forbidden territory, when he felt himself grappled from behind. He struggled with an energy, due as much to the sudden terror as to any exercise of the free will; but he struggled in vain. The arms that were fastened about his own bound them down with a grasp of steel; and after a few moments of desperate effort, accompanied with one or two exclamations, half-surprise, half-expostulation, of "Hello, friend, what do you mean?" and "I say, now, friend, you'd better have done--" the struggle ceased, and he lay supine in the hold of the unseen persons who had secured him. These persons he could not then discern; the passage was cavernously dark, and had evidently been as much the work of nature as of art. A handkerchief was fastened about his eyes, and he felt himself carried on the shoulders of those who made nothing of the burden. After the progress of several minutes, in which the anxiety natural to his situation led Bunce into frequent exclamations and entreaties, he was set down, the bandage was removed from his eyes, and he was once more permitted their free exercise.