Cruel As The Grave

Seest thou our home? 'tis where the woods are waving

In their dark richness to the autumn air;

Where yon blue stream its rocky banks are laving,

Leads down the hills a vein of light--'tis there.--HEMANS.

At the close of that second day, they stopped at a hamlet on the summit

of the Blue Ridge, from which they could view five counties. At the

little hotel they were entertained very much in the same manner as at

the inn of Underhill. Again Sybil's unspoken and unsuspected jealousy

was soothed by the caresses of her husband.

In the morning they resumed their journey in the early coach, that took

them across the beautiful valley that lies between the Blue Ridge and

the Allegheny Mountains. And again Lyon Berners' devotion to Rosa

Blondelle deeply distressed Sybil. At nightfall they reached Staunton,

where they slept.

On the morning of the fourth and last day of their journey, they took

the cross-country coach and changed their route, which now led them

towards the wildest, dreariest, and loneliest passes of the Alleghenies.

About mid-day the coach entered the dark defile known as the "Devils'

Descent." And, in fact, it needed all the noon sunshine to light up the

gloom of that fearful pass. Here the delight of the impressible young

foreigner deepened into awe.

"I have never seen anything like this in the old country," she breathed,

in a low, hushed tone.

And again Lyon Berners smiled most kindly and indulgently on her, and

again Sybil Berners sickened at heart. Every time Lyon so smiled on

Rosa, Sybil so sickened. She strove against this feeling, but she could

not overcome it.

As the day declined and the coach went on, wilder, drearier, and

lonelier became the road, until, at nightfall, it entered a pass so

gloomy, so savage, so terrific in its aspect, that the young stranger

involuntarily caught her breath and clung for protection to the arm of

Lyon Berners.

"I have never dreamed of a place like this," she gasped.

"You think," he said indulgently, "that if the other pass was called the

'Devil's Descent,' this should be the 'Gates of Hell.' Yet to us, it is

the 'Gates of Heaven;' since it is the entrance to our Valley Home."

And this affectionate mention of their mutual home almost consoled the

wife for the smile he bestowed on their beautiful guest while speaking.

Then all the women except Sybil held their breath in awe.

It was indeed an awful pass! a road roughly hewn through the bottom of a

deep, narrow, tortuous cleft in the mountains where, at some remote

period, by some tremendous convulsions of nature, the solid rocks had

been rent apart, leaving the ragged edges of the wound hanging at a

dizzy height between heaven and earth! The dark iron-gray precipices

that towered on each side were clothed in every cleft, from base to

summit, with clumps of dark stunted evergreens as sombre as themselves.

So tortuous, besides, was the pass, that the travellers could see but a

few yards before them at any time. There was but one cheering sight in

earth or sky, and that was the young crescent moon straight before them

in the west, and shining down in tender light upon the rudest precipice

of all.