AND THE EAGLE. 75 



within her bosom she remembered not how or when 

 but it was safe and scarcely daring to open her eyes, 

 she slid down the shelving rocks, and found herself on, 

 a small piece of firm root-bound soil, with the tops 

 of bushes appearing below. With fingers suddenly 

 strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself 

 down by briar and broom, and heather, and dwarf 

 birch. There a loosened stone lept over a ledge, and 

 no sound was heard, so profound was its fall. There, 

 the shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated 

 not to follow. Her feet bounded against the huge 

 stone that stopped them, but she felt no pain. Her body 

 was callous as the cliff. Steep as the wall of a house 

 was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted 

 with ivy, centuries old long ago dead, and without a 

 single green leaf but with thousands of arm-thick 

 stems petrified into the rock, and covering it as with a 

 trellice. She bound her baby to her neck, and with 

 hands and feet clung to that fearful ladder. Turning 

 round her head, and looking down, lo ! the whole po- 

 pulation of the parish, so great was the multitude, on 

 their knees ! and hush, the voice of psalms a hymn, 

 breathing the spirit of one united prayer ! Sad and so- 

 lemn was the strain but nothing dirge-like breathing 

 not of death, but deliverance. Often had she sung that 

 tune, perhaps the very words, but them she heard not, 

 in her own hut she and her mother or in the kirk, 

 along with all the congregation. An unseen hand 

 seemed fastening her fingers to the ribs of ivy, and in 

 sudden inspiration, believing that her life was to be 

 saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been 

 changed into a winged creature. Again her feet touched 



