Where the banks were difficult we went down into the frozen bed, and there had story above story of piled-up loveliness, with opal and diamond cellars below. Spikes and stars crystalline radiated and refracted and reflected marvellously. But we did not reach the primary source of the stream by miles; we were stopped by a precipitous rock, down the face of which one half of the stream fell, while the other crept out of its foot, from a little cavernous opening about four feet high. Charley was a few yards ahead of me, and ran stooping into the cavern. I followed. But when I had gone as far as I dared for the darkness and the down-sloping roof, and saw nothing of him, I grew dismayed, and called him. There was no answer. With a thrill of horror my dream returned upon me. I got on my hands and knees and crept forward. A short way further the floor sank--only a little, I believe, but from the darkness I took the descent for an abyss into which Charley had fallen. I gave a shriek of despair, and scrambled out of the cave howling. In a moment he was by my side. He had only crept behind a projection for a trick. His remorse was extreme. He begged my pardon in the most agonized manner. ‘Never mind, Charley,’ I said; ‘you didn’t mean it.’ ‘Yes, I did mean it,’ he returned. ‘The temptation came, and I yielded; only I did not know how dreadful it would be to you.’ ‘Of course not. You wouldn’t have done it if you had.’ ‘How am I to know that, Wilfrid? I might have done it. Isn’t it frightful that a body may go on and on till a thing is done, and then wish he hadn’t done it? I am a despicable creature. Do you know, Wilfrid, I once shot a little bird--for no good, but just to shoot at something. It wasn’t that I didn’t think of it--don’t say that. I did think of it. I knew it was wrong. When I had levelled my gun, I thought of it quite plainly, and yet drew the trigger. It dropped, a heap of ruffled feathers. I shall never get that little bird out of my head. And the worst of it is that to all eternity I can never make any atonement.’ ‘But God will forgive you, Charley.’ ‘What do I care for that,’ he rejoined, almost fiercely, ‘when the little bird cannot forgive me?--I would go on my knees to the little bird, if I could, to beg its pardon and tell it-what a brute I was, and it might shoot me if it would, and I should say “Thank you.”’ He laughed almost hysterically, and the tears ran down his face.