“There had been a storm, and the water had run down and filled the little river.”
As they chatted, the lads walked steadily on, and began to ascend the long, low eminence, which formed, as it were, the large body of the couchant lion, but which from where they were, seemed like the most ordinary of hills.
“There was another cave, too, that my father went into, but that was very different. It was high up in among the hills, and you went down quite a hole to get to it, and then it was just as if the inside of the hill had come full of cracks and splits along which he kept climbing and walking with the two sides just alike, just as if the stone had been broken in two.”
“Then this was stone, not mud,” said Scarlett, who was deeply interested.
“Yes, solid stone—rock; and every here and there you could see curious shapes, just as if water had been running down, and it had all been turned into stone.”
“I should like to go and see a place like that,” said Scarlett.
“Yes; I shouldn’t mind seeing a cave like that. Father says it went in for miles, and nobody had ever got to the end of it, for it branched off into narrow slits, and sometimes you were walking on shelves, and you could hold the candle over and look down horrible holes that were nobody knows how deep, and there you could hear the water gurgling at the bottom, and hissing and splashing, and— Oh!”
“Scar!” yelled Fred, making a dash at his companion just in time to catch him by the arm as he suddenly dropped down through a narrow opening in the midst of the short green turf over which they were walking.
So narrow was the opening, and so nearly hidden by grass and heath, that Scarlett had no difficulty in supporting himself by spreading out his arms, as soon as he had recovered from the first startling effect of his slip.
But he did not stop many minutes in this position. Fred hung on to his arm. He threw himself sidewise, grasped tightly hold of a stout branch of heath, and scrambled out.