Walking laboriously over the broad flat stone platform at the mouth of the gorge, with the thin sheet of bright water straggling over it, then ascending the rough stairs of board that lay irregularly on either side, and anon climbing carefully over the mossed and slippery rocks that offered such precarious foot-hold, the party ascended the Flume and stood at last between walls of less than six feet separation, the rock rising fifty or sixty feet on either side, and almost as square as if cut by the chisel of an artificer, impassable slimy boulders piled in confusion far ahead, the rough little stream tumbling away through the wilderness of stones beneath, and a chill dampness like that of the grave striking in to the very life-blood of those who had been imprudent enough to tempt the mountains without the protection of thick garments and warm flannels. Once, a little white Blossom of the company, just unfolding to the June luxuriance of womanhood, and whose name has no interest in this narration, was tempted by a mischievous relative and protector to try walking a rounded and slippery log that bridged the chasm, a few feet above the rough rocks and water below; but her nerves failed and her head grew dizzy when she was half way across, her lip quivered and then fluttered out a little cry of alarm, and her mischievous tempter retraced his own steps just in time to catch her and keep her from an ice-cold bath and limbs bruised on the rough stones lying in the stream underneath. There was another log spanning the Flume, a little higher up the chasm, and at a very different altitude from terra firma--hanging, in fact, like a stout black fence-rail, not less than eighty or an hundred feet in the air. Encircled by the eternal dampness rising out of the Flume, it could not be otherwise than slimy and slippery; and only a moment before the nameless Blossom tempted the log below, some of the company had looked up and remarked with a shudder that a firm foot and cool head would be necessary for the man who should tread over that frail bridge with its crumbling bark. As if the two had some mysterious connection, the moment _after_ Blossom's misadventure, some one heard voices in that direction and looked up again. Two figures stood upon the brink, and not so far away but that at least _some_ of the group below recognized them as "H. T." and Halstead Rowan, who had left the rest as they abandoned the wagons and commenced ascending the gorge.