After they had contemplated this scene for some time, O’Donell exclaimed: ‘Alexander, let us abide here. What need have we to travel farther? Let us make this our place of rest.’ ‘We will,’ replied Delancy. ‘And this shall be our abode,’ added he, pointing to a cave at the foot of the mountains. ‘It shall,’ returned O’Donell, as they entered it. In this country they remained for many long years, and passed their time in a manner which made them completely happy. Sometimes they would sit upon a high rock, and listen to the hoarse thunder rolling through the sky and making the mountains to echo and the desert to ring with its awful voice. Sometimes they would watch the lightning darting across black clouds and shivering huge fragments of rock in its terrible passage. Sometimes they would witness the great, glorious orb of gold sink behind the far distant mountains which girded the horizon, and then watch the advance of grey twilight, and the little stars coming forth in beauty, and the silver moon rising in her splendour, till the cold dews of night began to fall; and then they would retire to their beds in the cave with hearts full of joy and thankfulness. One evening they were seated in this cave by a large blazing fire of turf which cast its lurid light to the high arched roof and illuminated the tall and stately pillars, cut by the hand of nature out of the stony rock, with a cheerful red glare that appeared strange in this desolate land, which no fires had ever before visited, except those fierce flames of death which flash from the heavens when robed in the dreadful majesty of thunder. They were seated in this cave then, listening to the howling night-wind as it swept in mournful cadences through the trees of the forest which encircled the foot of the mountain and bordered the stream which flowed round it. They were quite silent, and their thoughts were occupied by those that were afar off, and whom it was their fate most likely never more to behold.