The Argosy, Vol. XXV, No. 3 — page 72: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

456 THE ARGOSY. stories I had heard, kept me waking and alert. ‘The very mystery of the place itself was a whip for the mind. The more I saw of it, the further I penetrated the depths of that shady glen, the greater was my desire to go on. - What man, I asked, would make a home in such a place? Where was his house? What forbade the pretty gipsy going with me to his gates? The forest answered me with a rustle of shading leaves; the torrent splashed in its rocky bed and seemed to say, ‘‘ A jest, a jest.”” I thought that I was the master of the glen, indeed—so little did I know. There was a bridle path by the torrent’s side, a soft track through sedgy grass and squelching bog. When I threw the reins upon my horse’s neck and let him go at his will, he followed the path readily as though familiar with it. Thus it came that I was carried toa very glade of leaves, toa bower aglow with green lights, walled by high bushes, wet with the freshen- ing foam of the cascade. So near were we to the burn that the spray half blinded me when I stooped to some forbidding branch. Often I thought that the willing beast I rode was about to step into the channel of the icy water. But he went on with a sure foot; and when we had followed the track, it may have been for half an hour, he neighed with pleasure as though here was the end of it, and began to trot up the hillside. And so he brought me to as picturesque a place as I have seen in all the world. An amphitheater of the hills; a great circle of green grass cut in the very heart of the thicket ! Mighty chestnut trees shaded it on all sides. ‘The forest beyond was dark and thick and often impenetrable. I could see fair bowers with creepers and flowering shrubs knotted about the stately trunks ; mazy paths wound their way into the heart of the copse ; the torrent whirled down upon my right hand, falling here from slab to slab of marble into pools green with spongy mosses. A ‘garden of the mountains, indeed ; a haven of solitude surpassing all I had heard or read of. In this theater of nature’s wonders I drew rein a spell to let my winded horse breathe. For the matter of that, the further I went up the hillside the more foolish did my journey appear to be. Here had I ridden for the half of an hour and had seen nothing of the man or of his house. I determined that if another mile gave me no more news of him, I would return to Zara- goza and to old Benjamin and abandon the fool’s errand forever. As the thing turned out, the resolution was premature. Ihad not been ten seconds in that amphitheater when a rustling of the leaves upon my left hand told me that I was no longer alone. ‘The barrel of a pistol held within an inch of my head added an unpleasant certainty to the surmise. If you have been in half a dozen actions and have had three inches of a dervish’s knife in your leg—as a slight token of his esteem—the fact that a pistol is about to comb your hair is not as disconcerting as it might be to the mere amateur. ‘To tell the truth, my only thought at such a time was an exclamation upon that folly which had permitted me to be led by the pretty eyes and the seductive lips of the gipsy girl. Not for a moment did I doubt thatI had fallen into the hands of the gentlemen of themountains ; and it oc- curred to me, for humorous thoughts will arise even in moments of peril, that a man who had enjoyed at no distant date the hospitality of the official Eomicbooks com