scrupulous integrity, and quite unlikely to forfeit his word, she
submitted to her fate with a good grace. She derived, however, great
consolation, (during the tightening of the bowstring,) from the
reflection that much of the history remained still untold, and that the
petulance of her brute of a husband had reaped for him a most righteous
reward, in depriving him of many inconceivable adventures.

A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROeM.

The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our
ways; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the
vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have
a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus.

Joseph Glanville.

WE had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the
old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.

"Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have guided you on this
route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past,
there happened to me an event such as never happened to mortal man--or
at least such as no man ever survived to tell of--and the six hours of
deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. You
suppose me a _very_ old man--but I am not. It took less than a single
day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken
my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least
exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look
over this little cliff without getting giddy?"

The "little cliff," upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself
down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while
he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme
and slippery edge--this "little cliff" arose, a sheer unobstructed
precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet
from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to
within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited
by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length
upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even
glance upward at the sky--while I struggled in vain to divest myself of
the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from
the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself into
sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance.

"You must get over these fancies