around the upper part of the terrace, until, arriving at the verge of the precipice, opposite to the point where Edwards had ascended, the horrid conviction burst on both at the same instant, that they were completely encircled by the fire. So long as a single pass up or down the mountain was unexplored, hope had invigorated them with her secret influence; but when retreat seemed to be absolutely impracticable, the horror of their situation broke upon Elizabeth as powerfully as if she had hitherto considered the danger nothing.
"This mountain is doomed to be fatal to me!" she whispered, rather than uttered aloud; "we shall find our graves on it!"
"Say not so, Miss Temple; there is yet hope," returned the youth, in the same tone, while the vacant, horrid expression of his eye, contradicted his words; "let us return to the point of the rock; there is, there must be, some place about it where we can descend."
"Lead me there," exclaimed Elizabeth; "let us leave no effort untried." She did not wait for his compliance, but turning, retraced her steps to the brow of the precipice, murmuring to herself, in suppressed hysterical sobs, "My father—my poor, my distracted father!"
Edwards was by her side in an instant, and with aching eyes he examined into every fissure in the crags, in quest of some opening that might offer the facilities of flight. But the smooth, even surface of the rocks afforded hardly a resting place for a foot, much less those continued projections which would have been necessary for a descent of nearly a hundred feet. Edwards was not slow in feeling the conviction that this hope was also futile, and, with a kind of feverish despair, that still urged him to action, he turned to some new expedient.
