Getting astride the tree, it swayed under her,--but she found she could push one of the larger boughs forward to lengthen the extemporary bridge,--and so, as it were, riding the waters, which surged noisily around her, she managed by dint of super-human effort to reach the projection of pebbly shore where the entrance to the cavern yawned open before her, black and desolate. The sun in its full morning glory blazed slanting down upon the darkness of the canon, and as she stood shivering, wet through and utterly exhausted, wondering what next she should do, she caught sight of a form moving within the cave like a moving shadow, and ascending a steep natural stairway of columnar rocks piled one on top of the other. Affrighted as she was by the tomb-like aspect of the deep vault, she had not ventured so far that she should now shrink from further dangers or fail in her quest;--the cherished object of her constant watchful care was within that subterranean blackness,--for what purpose?--she did not dare to think! But there was an instinctive sense of dread foreknowledge upon her,--a warning of impending evil,--and had she not sworn to him--"If God struck you down to hell I would be there!" The entrance to the cavern looked like the mouth of hell itself, as she had seen it depicted in one of her Catholic early lesson books. There were serpents and dragons in the picture ready to devour the impenitent sinner,--there might be serpents and dragons in this cave, for all she knew! But what matter? If the man she loved were actually in hell she "would be there"--as she had said!--and would surely find it Heaven! And so,--seeing the mere outline of his form moving ghost-like in the gloom, it was to her a guiding presence,--a light amid darkness,--and when,--after a minute or two--her straining eyes perceived him climbing steadily up the steep and perilous rocks, seeming about to disappear altogether,--she mastered the tremor of her nerves and crept cautiously step by step into the sombre vault, blindly feeling her way through the damp, thick murkiness, reckless of all danger, and only bent on following him. CHAPTER XXII