It required all her persuasive power to withhold her lover from a personal attack upon her betrothed husband.

“It can do no good, Eldon,” she urged; “my father has promised my hand to this man.  He is somehow in his power.  There seems no escape.  Oh, that I might die and be free!  It is like a horrible nightmare.”

Then his words came in passionate pleading.  Eloquently the tones fell upon her ears.  At length the hopeless apathy in her eyes gave place to interest, then animation, and finally to a degree of agitation but ill-concealed from the suspicious watcher.  They were standing on a low balcony just outside the ballroom.

“Will you, dearest?  Will you be brave for my sake—­for our sakes?” were Eldon’s parting words.

“I will try,” she murmured softly, as with a fond pressure of the hand he resigned her to a new partner.

Early next morning Eldon Brand might have been seen returning from a little wayside shop with a bundle, whose contents—­a ball of heavy twine, a can of oil, and a box of matches—­would have surprised his fellow tourists.  He conversed earnestly for some minutes with Stephen, the favorite guide of Mammoth Cave, to whom he also conveyed some bank notes; and at eight o’clock he joined the party en route for the nine-mile tramp into the cave.  For two miles the way was the same as that of the short route, bats and all.  Then came the immense hall where rude plank seats still attest the worship of pioneer settlers in the land of Indians and wild beasts.  Here they sat and sang hymns, while countless echoes repeated the sounds.

They paused in the Ball Room; squeezed through Fat Man’s Misery, that zig-zag passage so narrow and winding that the one behind cannot see his neighbor a yard ahead; and then out into the ample comfort of Great Relief.  Merrily they filled the little boats and sailed down Echo River, where abound the eyeless fish; crossed Lake Lethe, where all care is said to be left behind; passed the huge Granite Coffin; stood wondering before the Great Eastern; shuddered beside the Dead Sea and the Bottomless Pit; climbed Martha’s Vineyard, where huge bunches of grapes in stone looked as natural as life; took lunch in Washington Hall; revelled in the snow-white crystals of Siliman’s Avenue; crossed the Rocky Mountains to Traveller’s Rest, and there wrote their names upon the extreme wall, that perpetual register of hundreds of sightseers.

Here some moments were given to recapitulating the marvels of the long route; the rivers, lakes, hills, ravines and valleys; and above all, another black, yawning chasm similar to that which had startled them on the short route.

“Stephen, where does that lead?” was the query.

“That leads into the one we saw yesterday.  We call this end Beersheba, and the other Dan, because it is so much nearer the mouth of the cave.  I have explored the whole passage, but it has nothing worth showing visitors.  But I have no doubt there’s miles that nobody has ever been over.  It’s a big place, I tell you.”