Then there was the fragment of arched passage underground laid open to the air in the centre of the islet; and last, and grandest of all, the awful edges of the rock, broken by time, and carved by the winds and the waters into grotesque shapes and threatening forms. Over all the surface of the islet we carried Connie, and from three sides of this sea-fortress she looked abroad over "the Atlantic's level powers." It blew a gentle ethereal breeze on the top; but had there been such a wind as I have since stood against on that fearful citadel of nature, I should have been in terror lest we should all be blown, into the deep. Over the edge she peeped at the strange fantastic needle-rock, and round the corner she peeped to see Wynnie and her mother seated in what they call Arthur's chair--a canopied hollow wrought in the plated rock by the mightiest of all solvents--air and water; till at length it was time that we should take our leave of the few sheep that fed over the place, and issuing by the gothic door, wind away down the dangerous path to the safe ground below. "I think we had better tie up your eyes again, Connie?" I said. "Why?" she asked, in wonderment. "There's nothing higher yet, is there?" "No, my love. If there were, you would hardly be able for it to-day, I should think. It is only to keep you from being frightened at the precipice as you go down." "But I sha'n't be frightened, papa." "How do you know that?" "Because you are going to carry me." "But what if I should slip? I might, you know." "I don't mind. I sha'n't mind being tumbled over the precipice, if you do it. I sha'n't be to blame, and I'm sure you won't, papa." Then she drew my head down and whispered in my ear, "If I get as much more by being killed, as I have got by having my poor back hurt, I'm sure it will be well worth it." I tried to smile a reply, for I could not speak one. We took her just as she was, and with some tremor on my part, but not a single slip, we bore her down the winding path, her face showing all the time that, instead of being afraid, she was in a state of ecstatic delight. My wife, I could see, was nervous, however; and she breathed a sigh of relief when we were once more at the foot. "Well, I'm glad that's over," she said. "So am I," I returned, as we set down the litter. "Poor papa! I've pulled his arms to pieces! and Mr. Percivale's too!" Percivale answered first by taking up a huge piece of stone. Then turning towards her, he said, "Look here, Miss Connie;" and flung it far out from the isthmus on which we were resting. We heard it strike on a rock below, and then fall in a shower of fragments. "My arms are all right, you see," he said. Meantime, Wynnie had scrambled down to the shore, where we had not yet been. In a few minutes, we still lingering, she came running back to us out of breath with the news: "Papa! Mr. Percivale! there's such a grand cave down there! It goes right through under the island."