ey gazed back at the obscure
wilderness which they had traversed, and longed to be buried again
in its depths rather than trust themselves to so vast and visible a
solitude.

'Shall we go on?' said Matthew, throwing his arm round Hannah's waist,
both to protect her and to comfort his heart by drawing her close to it.

But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman's love of jewels,
and could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the
world, in spite of the perils with which it must be won.

'Let us climb a little higher,' whispered she, yet tremulously, as she
turned her face upward to the lonely sky.

'Come, then,' said Matthew, mustering his manly courage and drawing her
along with him, for she became timid again the moment that he grew bold.

And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbuncle, now
treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines,
which, by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had barely
reached three feet in altitude. Next, they came to masses and fragments
of naked rock heaped confusedly together, like a cairn reared by giants
in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing
breathed, nothing grew; there was no life but what was concentrated in
their two hearts; they had climbed so high that Nature herself seemed no
longer to keep them company. She lingered beneath them, within the verge
of the forest trees, and sent a farewell glance after her children as
they strayed where her own green footprints had never been. But soon
they were to be hidden from her eye. Densely and dark the mists began to
gather below, casting black spots of shadow on the vast landscape, and
sailing heavily to one centre, as if the loftiest mountain peak had
summoned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally, the vapors welded
themselves, as it were, into a mass, presenting the appearance of a
pavement over which the wanderers might have trodden, but where they
would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed earth which they had
lost. And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth again, more
intensely, alas! than, beneath a clouded sky, they had ever desired a
glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief to their desolation when
the mists, creeping gradually up the mountain, concealed its lonely
peak, and thus annihilated, at least for them, the whole region
of visible space. But they drew closely together, with a fond and
mel