To his great wonder, however, nothing but women, of all sizes and ages, met his sight. In vain did he look around for the men who brought him. They were no longer to be seen, and so silent had been their passage out, that the unfortunate pedler was compelled to satisfy himself with the belief that persons of the gentler sex had been in truth his captors. Had he, indeed, given up the struggle so easily? The thought was mortifying enough; and yet, when he looked around him, he grew more satisfied with his own efforts at resistance. He had never seen such strongly-built women in his life: scarcely one of them but could easily have overthrown him, without stratagem, in single combat. The faces of many of them were familiar to him; but where had he seen them before? His memory failed him utterly, and he gave himself up to his bewilderment. He looked around, and the scene was well calculated to affect a nervous mind. It was a fit scene for the painter of the supernatural. The small apartment in which they were, was formed in great part from the natural rock; where a fissure presented itself, a huge pine-tree, overthrown so as to fill the vacuity, completed what nature had left undone; and, bating the one or two rude cavities left here and there in the sides--themselves so covered as to lie hidden from all without--there was all the compactness of a regularly-constructed dwelling. A single and small lamp, pendent from a beam that hung over the room, gave a feeble light, which, taken in connection with that borrowed from without, served only to make visible the dark indistinct of the place. With something dramatic in their taste, the old women had dressed themselves in sombre habiliments, according to the general aspect of all things around them; and, as the unfortunate pedler continued to gaze in wonderment, his fear grew with every progressive step in his observation. One by one, however, the old women commenced stirring, and, as they moved, now before and now behind him--his eyes following them on every side--he at length discovered, amid the group, the small and delicate form of the very being for whom he sought.