AND THE EAGLE. 73 



words, she flew off through the brakes and over the 

 huge stones, up up up faster than ever huntsman 

 ran in to the death, fearless as a goat playing among 

 precipices. No one doubted, no one could doubt, that 

 she would soon be dashed to pieces. But have not 

 people who walk in their sleep, obedient to the myste- 

 rious guidance of dreams, clomb the walls of old ruins, 

 and found footing, even in decrepitude, along the edge 

 of unguarded battlements and down dilapidated stair- 

 cases, deep as draw-wells or coal-pits, and returned 

 with open, fixed, and unseeing eyes, unharmed to 

 their beds, at midnight ? It is all the work of the soul, 

 to whom the body is a slave ; and shall not the agony 

 of a mother's passion who sees her baby, whose warm 

 mouth has just left her breast, hurried off by a demon 

 to a hideous death bear her limbs aloft wherever there 

 is dust to dust, till she reach that devouring den, and 

 fiercer and more furious far, in the passion of love, 

 than any bird of prey that ever bathed its beak in 

 blood, throttle the fiends, that with their heavy wings 

 would fain flap her down the cliffs, and hold up her 

 child in deliverance before the eye of the all-seeing 

 God? 



" No stop no stay she knew not that she drew 

 her breath. Beneath her feet Providence fastened 

 every loose stone, and to her hands strengthened every 

 root. How was she ever to descend ? That fear, then, 

 but once crossed her heart, as up up up to the little 

 image made of her own flesh and blood. * The God 

 who holds me now from perishing-^will not the same 

 God save me when my child is on my bosom ?' Down 

 came the fierce rushing of the eagles' wings each 

 H 



