They were crossing Monroe to Franklin, over the narrow back-bone of land that has been mentioned in the ascent, and at the very point where Oakes' Gulf, now on the left, and the scarcely less terrible Gulf of Mexico on the right, narrowed the whole causeway to not much more than a dozen of feet,--when Townsend heard a sudden and sharp cry behind him. At that point the descent of the path was very precipitous, and over stones so rugged that the horses kept their feet with great difficulty; and in his anxiety to insure safe footing he had for the moment lost sight of his fair companion--a poor recommendation of his ability as an escort, perhaps, but not less true than reprehensible! At the cry he turned instantly, though he could not so suddenly check the course of his horse down the path without danger of throwing him from his feet; and as he looked around, through the olive brown of his cheek a deadly whiteness crept to the skin, and his blood stood still as it had probably never before done since the tide of life first surged through his veins. It has been the lot of many men to look upon a horror accomplished or so nearly accomplished that any reversal of the decree of fate seemed to be beyond hope. Such is the gaze upon the strewn dead of the battle-field, before the life has quite gone out from a few who are already worse than dead, and when the groans and the cries for "water!" to cool the lips parched in the last fever, have not yet entirely ceased. Such is the hopeless glance at the windrow of dead strewing the shore when a ship is going to pieces in the surf, in plain sight and yet beyond the aid of human hands, and when every moment is adding another to the drowned and ghastly subjects for the rough-coated Coroner. Such is the stony regard at the crushed victims of a railroad catastrophe, or the charred and blackened remains of those who were but a little while ago living passengers on the steamboat that is just burning at the water's edge. Such, even, is the shuddering glance at the brave and unconscious firemen who stand beneath a heavy wall, when that wall is surging forward and coming down in a crushing mass upon their very heads, with no power except a miracle of Omnipotence to prevent their being flattened into mere pan-cakes of flesh, and blood, and bone. All these, and a thousand others, are horrors accomplished or beyond hope of being averted; and they are enough to sicken the heart and brain of humanity brought into sudden familiarity with them. But perhaps they are not the worst--perhaps that yet unaccomplished but probable horror is still more terrible, because uncertainty blends with it and there is yet enough of hope to leaven despair. The life not yet fully forfeited, but going--going; the form not yet crushed out of the human semblance, but to be so in a moment unless that one chance intervenes; the face--especially if the face be that of woman, a thousand times more beautiful in the relief