. I wish
I hadn't come."

"What, because we've had a bit of difficulty?"

"Bit? Why it's all difficulty. I couldn't help it. I wanted to come
along pluckily like you did, but something inside wouldn't let me. It
was just as if it kept whispering, `Don't go; you'll be sure to fall,
and then what'll your mother say?'"

"But it was a horrible bit to go along."

"You didn't seem to think so," he said, in an ill-used tone.

"But I did feel so, and I was frightened."

"Couldn't ha' been, or you'd have stuck fast same as I did."

"But I was frightened, I tell you, and so was Gunson."

"Then he needn't have been so nasty with me."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing. That was the worst of it. Only wish he had, 'stead o'
looking at me as he did. For I couldn't help it a bit."

"Well, never mind; it's all past now."

"It ain't, I tell you, and never will be past. Everybody will know that
I am a horrible coward, and it will stick to me as long as I live."

I tried to laugh, at him and pass it off, but it was of no use. He took
it regularly to heart, harping constantly upon Gunson's manner to him.

"But you are making mountains of mole-hills," I cried at last, angrily.

"Well, that's what they are made out of, isn't it, only plenty of it."

"But you say he looked at you."

"Yes; he looked at me."

"Well, what of that? There's no harm in his looking at you."

"Oh, ain't there? You don't know. He just can look. It was just as if
he was calling me a miserable cowardly cur, and it cut me horrid.
S'pose I did stick fast in the middle of that path--Bah! it isn't a path
at all--wasn't it likely? If I hadn't stopped and held on tight, I
should ha' been half-way back to the sea by this time, with my nose
knocked off at the least, and the salmon making a meal of what was left
of me. 'Course I held on as tight as I could, and enough to make me."

"Well, never mind," I said. "There: I won't hear a word more about it.
Perhaps I shall be a horrible coward next time, and then Gunson will
look at me."

"If he does, I shall hit him, so there."

Esau looked ill-used at me because I laughed, and kept on muttering all
the time we were in that terrible gorge, just as if the gloom of the
place oppressed him. As for me, I seemed to have enough to do to watch
where I placed my feet as we slowly climbed on for hour after hour,
thinking all the time of the valley I had read of years before in the
_Pilgrim's Progress_,