bed ever so far, till she didn't look no bigger than a
snowbird.

"At last she came to a small flat place, like a table, and then she
turned round to rest, get breath, and take a look at the glorious view;
and jist as she hove-to, up went her little heels, and away went her
stick, right over a big parpendicular cliff, hundreds and hundreds, and
thousands of feet deep. So deep, you couldn't see the bottom for the
shadows, for the very snow looked black down there. There is no way in,
it is so steep, but over the cliff; and no way out, but one, and that
leads to t'other world. I can't describe it to you, though. I have see'd
it since myself. There are some things too big to lift; some, too big
to carry after they be lifted; and some too grand for the tongue to
describe too. There's a notch where dictionary can't go no farther, as
well as every other created thing, that's a fact. P'rhaps if I was to
say it looked like the mould that that 'are very peak was cast in, afore
it was cold and stiff, and sot up on eend, I should come as near the
mark as any thing I know on.

"Well away she slid, feet and hands out, all flat on her face, right
away, arter her pike staff. Most people would have ginn it up as gone
goose, and others been so frightened as not to do any thing at all; or
at most only jist to think of a prayer, for there was no time to say
one.

"But not so Lot's 'wife. She was of a conquerin' natur'. She never gave
nothin' up, till she couldn't hold on no longer. She was one o' them
critters that go to bed mistress, and rise master; and just as she
got to the edge of the precipice, her head hangin' over, and her eyes
lookin' down, and she all but ready to shoot out and launch away into
bottomless space, the ten commandments brought her right short up. Oh,
she sais, the sudden joy of that sudden stop swelled her heart so big,
she thought it would have bust like a byler; and, as it was, the great
endurin' long breath she drew, arter such an alfired escape, almost
killed her at the ebb, it hurt her so."

"But," said Mr. Hopewell, "how did the ten commandments save her? Do you
mean that figuratively, or literally. Was it her reliance on providence,
arising from a conscious observance of the decalogue all her life, or
was it a book containing them, that caught against some thing, and stopt
her descent. It is very interesting. Many a person, Sam, has been saved
when at the brink of destruction, by laying fast hold on the