What could have induced her trained pony to spring out from the path a few feet behind and rush into that perilous elevation, must ever remain (in the absence of an equine lexicon) quite as much of a mystery as it seemed at that moment. Perhaps it was in going down some such declivity of path as that before him, that he had been kicked by the vicious bay of Frank Vanderlyn while making the ascent, and that he had concluded to wait on this convenient shelf until all the rest had gone by, before he consented to make the passage with his fair burthen. Perhaps the movement was merely one of those unaccountable freaks of sullen madness in which horses as well as men sometimes have the habit of indulging. At all events, such was the situation; and the recollection of it, as thus recalled to those who were present, will be quite enough, as we are well aware, to set the heart beating most painfully. What, then, must have been the feeling of all who saw, and especially of that man who had promised to _protect_ the fair being thus placed in peril! What thoughts of the playful threat of Halstead Rowan must have rushed through his brain--that "if she got into any kind of a scrape by riding with a man who _couldn't_ ride," such and such fatal results would follow! Not a duel with the Illinoisan--oh, no!--but a black, terrible, life-long duel with his own self-reproaches and remorse for heedlessness and want of judgment--this would be the doom more fearful than a thousand personal chastisements, if danger became destruction. One clumsy movement of the horse's feet, one slip on the stone, and she would as certainly go over that dizzy precipice and fall so crushed and mangled a mass into the gulf below that her fragments could scarcely be distinguished from those of the pony she rode--as certainly as she had grace and love and beauty crowning her life and adding to the possible horror of her death. He did not know, then, how many of the cavalcade saw the situation, or how the blood of most who saw stood still like his own, with dread and apprehension. The inconceivable rapidity of human thought has been so often made a matter of comment, that words could but be wasted in illustrating it. It shames the lightning and makes sluggard light itself. All these thoughts in the mind of Horace Townsend scarcely consumed that time necessary to draw rein and turn himself round in the saddle in a quick attempt to alight, rush up the side of the rock and seize her horse by the bridle or swing her from her seat. He had no irresolution--no moment of hesitation--he only thought and suffered in that single instant preceding action. "For God's sake do not move! I will be there in one instant!" he said in a low, hoarse, intense voice that reached her like a trumpet's clang. "Oh yes--quick! quick!" he heard her reply, in a convulsive, frightened voice. "Oh, quick!--you don't know where I am!" Poor girl!--he _did_ know where she was, too well.