“And a very little ingenuity or a small charge of powder would force an opening; and their way would then be easy to get up here?”
“Certainly.”
Monella’s face clouded.
“That must not be; you must clearly understand that you must tell me in time if there seems any such probability. I wish not to seem unfriendly towards your friends—and personally I liked them—but to allow them to come in here would be as the beginning of a flood, as the letting out of water. It cannot, must not be.”
“Well, after all, it is only a supposition,” observed Jack. “Time enough to deal with it, if the occasion actually arise. They were going on to Rio on some law business which was likely to occupy them some time; they might be detained there indefinitely, they said.”
“Quite so,” Monella answered decisively. “Only, remember, I rely upon you to inform me in time. And be very cautious and vigilant upon that side of the country, for, as you know, it is in that direction that Coryon and his people have their habitation.”
In their walks they were often accompanied by one or both of Ulama’s pumas, and on the day referred to the male one, ‘Tuo,’ as it was called, came after them when they had gone a little way, and trotted quietly beside them; and this, as it turned out, saved their lives.
They came upon a place they had not seen before. Two great iron gates of highly finished workmanship, and picked out with gold, shut in a narrow opening in a high rock. They were such as might form the entrance to a public garden. A broad road wound round from the inside of the gates; but outside, where Templemore and Elwood were, the rocks rose up fifty or sixty feet, or even more, on either side; and though they followed them a considerable distance on both sides of the gates, the rocks still towered up precipitously for as far as they could see.
“This can scarcely be the entrance to Coryon’s ‘domain,’” said Jack, “or there would be some people about on guard. It must be some kind of public place.”
“A cemetery, perhaps,” suggested Leonard.