As the strife
proceeded, he half forgot his precaution, and unconsciously continued,
at every moment, to approach more nearly to the scene of strife. His
heart was now all impulse, his spirit all enthusiasm; and with an
unquiet eye and restless frame, he beheld the silent passage of the
little detachment under the gallant Georgian, up the narrow gorge. At
some distance from the hill, and on an eminence, his position enabled
him to perceive, when the party had made good their advance nearly to
the summit, the impending danger. He saw the threatening cliff, hanging
as it were in mid air above them; and all his sympathies, warmly excited
at length by the fearfulness of the peril into a degree of active
partisanship which, at the beginning, a proper prudence had well
counselled him to avoid, he put spurs to his steed, and rushing forward
to the foot of the hill, shouted out to the advancing party the nature
of the danger which awaited them. He shouted strenuously, but in
vain--and with a feeling almost amounting to agony, he beheld the little
troop resolutely advance beneath the ponderous rock, which, held in its
place by the slightest purchase, needed but the most moderate effort to
upheave and unfix it for ever.
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