she
hadn't gone!"

Penn afterwards understood that Dan had actually had a glimpse of
Virginia when she ran out to the entrance of the gorge, and stood there
a moment in the terrible heat and glare.

"Where--show me where!" he exclaimed with fierce vehemence, dragging
Pepperill after him down the rocks.

"It war a considerable piece this side the round rock, nigh the upper
eend o' the grove," said Dan, in a jarred voice, clattering after him,
as fast as he could. "I reckon I kin find it, if 'tain't too late."

Too late? It must not be too late! Penn leaps down the ledges, and
rushes through the thickets, as if he would overtake time itself. They
reach the burning grove. Pepperill points out as nearly as he can the
spot where he stood when he saw Virginia. Great God! if she was in
there, what a frightful end was hers!

"Daniel! are you sure?"--for Penn cannot, will not believe--it is too
terrible!

Daniel is very sure; and he withdraws from the insufferable heat, to
which his companion appears insensible.

"There is a gorge just above there; perhaps she escaped into the gorge.
O, if I had known!" groans the half-distracted youth, thinking how near
he must have been to her when the fire awoke him.

He still hopes that Dan's vision of her in the fire was but the
hallucination of a bewildered brain. Yet no effort will he spare, no
danger will he shun. The entrance to the gorge is all a gulf of flame;
and the woods are blazing upwards along the cliffs, and all the forest
beyond is turning to a sea of fire. Yet the gorge must be reached. Back
again up the steep slope they climb. Penn flies to the verge of the
cliff. He looks down: the chasm is all a glare of light. There runs the
red-gleaming brook. He sees the logs, the stones, the mosses, all the
wild entanglement, deep below. But no Virginia. He runs almost into the
crackling flames, in order to peer farther down the gorge. Then he darts
away in the opposite direction, along the very brink of the precipice,
among the fire-lit trees,--Pepperill stupidly following. He seizes hold
of a sapling, and, with his foot braced against its root, swings his
body forward over the chasm, the better to gaze into its depths. From
that position he casts his eye up the gorge. He sees the cascade falling
over the ledge in a sheet of ruddy foam. He discovers the upper gorge;
sees a monster of the forest come plunging and plashing down to the
fall, and there lift himself on his haunch