CHAPTER XVIII
THE LEOPARD’S-BANE
Their minds once made up, the children collected the fading armfuls of leopard’s-bane and made for the arbour that led to the tunnel. Inside the door they lighted the candle, closed and bolted the door as they had been told to, and went carefully down the steps and along the secret passage. And as they went they heard something moving in the darkness that lay thick beyond the little wavering light of their candle.
They stopped and listened. They heard the sound of breathing, and the next moment they saw, vaguely, in the almost darkness, something four-footed, spotted, furry, creeping along the passage towards them. It uttered a low, fierce, snarling growl.
‘Throw it down,’ said Caroline, casting her flowers from her. ‘It can’t pass it. It can’t.’
A heap of tangled crushed leaves and flowers was all that there was now between the children and the leopard.
Something four-footed, spotted, furry, creeping along the passage.
‘It can’t pass it. It can’t,’ said Caroline again, in an agonised whisper. Yet none of the children dared to turn and fly. Charlotte had remembered what she had heard of quelling wild animals by the power of the human eye, and was trying, almost without knowing that she tried, to meet the eye of this one. But she could not. It held its head down close to the ground and kept quite still. Every one felt it was impossible to turn their backs on the creature. Better to face it. If they turned and ran, well, the door at the end of the passage was bolted; and if the flower-spell should fail, then, the moment their backs were turned, the leopard might—with one spring——
‘Oh, I wish we hadn’t,’ said Charles, and burst into tears.
‘Don’t, oh, don’t!’ said Caroline; and to the leopard, who had not moved, she said, with wild courage: