By and by she heard the sounds of blows, which came nearer and
nearer;
but again they grew duller and almost died away. In a hundred
directions
she turned, obedient to the guiding thread.
At last she spied a dull red shine, and came up to the mica-window,
and
thence away and round about, and right into a cavern, where glowed
the
red embers of a fire. Here the thread began to rise. It rose as high as
her head, and higher still. What _should_ she do if she lost her hold?
She was pulling it down! She might break it! She could see it far up,
glowing as red as her fire-opal in the light of the embers.
But presently she came to a huge heap of stones, piled in a slope
against the wall of the cavern. On these she climbed, and soon
recovered
the level of the thread--only however to find, the next moment, that it
vanished through the heap of stones, and left her standing on it, with
her face to the solid rock. For one terrible moment, she felt as if her
grandmother had forsaken her. The thread which the spiders had spun
far
Madhuri Noah
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