Above him was the mountain.

Retread his footsteps until he had seen his beloved master, he was resolved not to do--to perish in these glens would be more tolerable to him; for while he moved forward, hope, even in the arms of death, would cheer him with the whisper that he was in the path of duty.

He therefore entered the cavity, and passing on, soon perceived an aperture, through which emerging on the other side, he found himself again on the margin of the river.

Having attained a wider bed, it left him a still narrower causeway to perform the remainder of his journey.
Huge masses of rock, canopied with a thick umbrage of firs, beech, and weeping-birch, closed over the glen and almost excluded the light of day.

But more anxious, as he calculated by the increased rapidity of the stream he must now be approaching the great fall near his master's concealment, Halbert redoubled his speed.