"My!" said Matthew Henry, gazing; and Annet turned on her sister and said, "There, now!" The words may seem inadequate, but Linnet understood them, and that they conveyed a question which she felt to be a poser. How could she doubt the existence of mermaids in such a spot as this? If a mermaid were to swim up to the surface under their very eyes, would she be more wonderful than the actual scene—the black rocks, the sobbing water?
"Folks," said Annet, incisively, "that laugh at stories about Piper's Hole, ought to come and see the place for themselves."
"Yes," Matthew Henry agreed; "and after that they can begin to talk."
"I didn't laugh," protested Linnet, flung upon her defence. "Besides," she went on weakly, "I don't see why it must be mermaids. If anything lives down there, why shouldn't it be a dragon—-or a giant, perhaps——"
"Linnet's improving," put in Matthew Henry, with fine sarcasm.
"Well, it sounds to me more like the noise a dragon would make," Linnet persisted, finding as she went on that her argument was carrying her through very creditably; "or a giant snoring, as they always do after meals."
Annet scanned the black water pensively. "I've heard tell," she said, "of great cuttles that sit and squat under the water; and sometimes, when they are hungry, they fling up their suckers and pull you down off the rocks and eat you."
Matthew Henry drew back from the brink, visibly daunted.
"Look here," he began, "I don't mind mermaids. Mermaids, so far as they go——"
But here he came to a halt as a tinkling sound—the sound of a stringed instrument, gently thrummed, rose from out of the abyss.