Beowald was with them. He led them up the hill to the old temple-cave. The villagers shrank back in fear when they saw the queer stone images. The statue of the sitting man, at the back, was now whole again. The robbers that the boys had seen the night before had come up to the cave, found the statue in half, and, fearing that their secret had been discovered, had closed the two halves together once more and gone back into the cave below.
Peggy and Nora watched Blind Beowald put his finger into the right ear of the statue. The villagers cried out in wonder when they saw the stone man split in half, and divide slowly. Beowald pointed down to the hole that the statue hid so well.
“That is the way,” he said.
The villagers went to the hole and looked down. They shivered. They did not want to go down at all. Thoughts of mysterious magic, of mountain-spirits, filled their heads.
But one bolder than the rest slid down the rope, calling to the others to follow. One by one they went down. The girls wanted to go too, but Tooku and Yamen forbade them sternly. “This is men’s work,” they said. “You would only get in the way.” So the girls had to go back to the castle, where Paul’s mother sat waiting for news, white and anxious.
Nora and Peggy tried to comfort her by telling her of the adventures they and the boys had had before, and how they had always won through in the end. The Queen smiled at them, and sighed.
“You are adventurous children!” she said. “Wherever you go, you have adventures. I shall be glad when this adventure is over!”
There was no news at all that day. The search party did not return. Beowald came down from the temple to say that although he had listened well by the hole, he had heard nothing. For the first time he was angry with his blindness, for he badly wanted to follow his friends into the mountain. But he did not dare to, because he would be completely lost in a place he did not know.
Towards tea-time the sky suddenly darkened. The girls went to the window. Yamen was with them, and she looked out too.
“A storm is coming,” she said, pointing to the west. “A great storm. You must not be frightened, little ones. Sometimes, when the weather has been hot, the big clouds blow up, and the lighning tears the sky in two, whilst the thunder roars and echoes round.”