The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs: to the steep mountainside, where he himself had difficulty
in walking without using his hand to keep from falling.
Twice the American attempted to break through the taci-
turnity of his guides, but his advances were met with noth-
ing more than sultry grunts or silence, and presently a sus-
picion began to obtrude itself among his thoughts that pos-
sibly these "honest farmers" were something more sinister
than they represented themselves to be.
A malign and threatening atmosphere seemed to surround
them. Even the cat-like movement of their silent mounts
breathed a sinister secrecy, and now, for the first time,
 The Mad King |