A few bushes--another unexpected obstacle, followed by a bad stumble--separated her from the contact for which she had reached; then by a final effort her fingers found the boards and she went eagerly on, dragging herself through the wet without knowing it, and only stopping with a sense of shock, when her hand, sliding from the boards, fell groping about in midair with nothing to grasp at.

She had come to the end of the fence and was within a foot of the bridge--if the bridge was still there.
But her fears on this score were few, and she felt about with hand and foot till the former struck the rail at her side, and the latter the narrow planking spanning the gorge.
She hesitated now.

Who would not?
But the impulse which had led her thus far continued to urge her on.

She stepped upon the bridge and proceeded to cross it, clinging to the rail with a feverish clutch, and feeling every board with her foot before venturing to trust her full weight upon it.

She found them seemingly firm, and when about halfway across she stopped to listen for the roar of the mountain stream which she knew to be rushing over its rocky bed some forty awesome feet below her.
She heard it, but the swish of the trees lining the gorge was in her straining ears and half drowned its sullen sound.