“What’s the good?”
“I don’t know that it will be any good, but let’s see. There may be all kinds of strange things in a cave. I’ve read about wonderful places that went into the earth for a long way.”
“Yes; but our Rill cave would not. My father told me one day about two caves he went into in Derbyshire. One had a little river running out of it, and he went in and walked by the side of the water for a long way till he came to a black arch, and there the gentlemen who were with him lit candles and they waded into the water and crept under the dark arch, and then went on and on for a long way through cave after cave, all wet and dripping from the top. Sometimes they were obliged to wade in the stream, and sometimes they walked along the edge.”
“And what did they find?”
“Mud,” said Fred, laconically.
“Nothing else?”
“No; only mud, sticky mud, no matter how far they went; and at last they got tired of it, and turned back to find that the water had risen, and was close up to the top of the arch under which they had crept, so that they had to wait half a day before it went down.”
“What made the water rise?” asked Scarlett; “the tide?”
“No; there were no tides there right in among the hills.”
“Then how was it?”