Clinging together at the entrance, the three little girls gazed breathlessly at their undreamed-of surroundings, and Masha, spellbound, saw what looked like a little frozen brook. It flowed down the wall spreading out in beautiful seaweed forms along its edges as if carved in white stone, and from the tip of each leaf hung a drop as white as a pearl—hung and then, with a tiny sigh, fell into the shadows below.
‘The lost brook!’ gasped Masha. ‘There it is!’
In her excitement, she had forgotten the strange people, but her voice startled them, and the guide turned quickly, throwing the light of his torch full upon the girls. Shy as wood birds, they stood dumb, and took the scolding of the astonished guide without trying to explain. Nothing mattered now. They would be out in the sunlight in a few minutes, and they were thrilled at the revelation of the vast and beautiful room, on the threshold of which they had sat unknowingly but a little while before.
But as the people moved on, the children hurried with them, forgetting the frozen brook and their own dark hour in their haste to get back to their world in the sun.
They shot into the light and scampered like rabbits through the woods. The crickets were chirping in the grass and the birds in the forest, and the fir trees smelt like incense in the warm sunshine.
‘Why, we are sitting on top of the cave now,’ cried Masha, as they sat down to their lunch.
‘Oh! the poor little brook!’ she sighed. ‘I wish we could let it out.’
That evening Treska’s father made a fire on the earthen floor of the hut, and Janko brought water to fill the black pot, which hung above it. Masha and Treska peeled potatoes and spread mushrooms to toast on the hot stones. From the rafters hung bunches of red peppers and golden corn, and right over the fire, tied in a white cloth, was a big cheese in process of being smoked.
‘You mean to say that you have been inside the cave?’ cried Janko, enviously, when the girls had told him of their adventure. ‘Why, it costs fifteen crowns to enter, and I have never seen it!’
Masha told him of the lost brook, and of how they had found it again inside the cave.