Black Hall

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.