The ledge, along which he crawled, was about a foot wide.  In length the arch exceeded seventy feet.  To the poor carpenter it seemed an endless distance.  When, by slow and toilsome efforts, he had arrived midway, something obstructed his further progress.  It was a huge stone placed there by some workmen occupied in repairing the structure.  Cold drops stood upon Wood’s brow, as he encountered this obstacle.  To return was impossible,—­to raise himself certain destruction.  He glanced downwards at the impetuous torrent, which he could perceive shooting past him with lightning swiftness in the gloom.  He listened to the thunder of the fall now mingling with the roar of the blast; and, driven almost frantic by what he heard and saw, he pushed with all his force against the stone.  To his astonishment and delight it yielded to the pressure, toppled over the ledge, and sank.  Such was the hubbub and tumult around him, that the carpenter could not hear its plunge into the flood.  His course, however, was no longer interrupted, and he crept on.

After encountering other dangers, and being twice, compelled to fling himself flat upon his face to avoid slipping from the wet and slimy pathway, he was at length about to emerge from the lock, when, to his inexpressible horror, he found he had lost the child!

All the blood in his veins rushed to his heart, and he shook in every limb as he made this discovery.  A species of vertigo seized him.  His brain reeled.  He fancied that the whole fabric of the bridge was cracking over head,—­that the arch was tumbling upon him,—­that the torrent was swelling around him, whirling him off, and about to bury him in the deafening abyss.  He shrieked with agony, and clung with desperate tenacity to the roughened stones.  But calmer thoughts quickly succeeded.  On taxing his recollection, the whole circumstance rushed to mind with painful distinctness.  He remembered that, before he attempted to dislodge the stone, he had placed the child in a cavity of the pier, which the granite mass had been intended to fill.  This obstacle being removed, in his eagerness to proceed, he had forgotten to take his little charge with him.  It was still possible the child might be in safety.  And so bitterly did the carpenter reproach himself with his neglect, that he resolved, at all risks, to go back in search of it.  Acting upon this humane determination, he impelled himself slowly backwards,—­for he did not dare to face the blast,—­and with incredible labour and fatigue reached the crevice.  His perseverance was amply rewarded.  The child was still safe.  It lay undisturbed in the remotest corner of the recess.

So overjoyed was the carpenter with the successful issue of his undertaking, that he scarcely paused a moment to recruit himself; but, securing the child, set out upon his return.  Retracing his steps, he arrived, without further accident, at the eastern platform of the starling.  As he anticipated, he was here comparatively screened from the fury of the wind; and when he gazed upon the roaring fall beneath him, visible through the darkness in a glistening sheet of foam, his heart overflowed with gratitude for his providential deliverance.