The broad sheet of water ran up in quite a bay toward the fine old English mansion, and round this bay were dense clumps of hazels, patches of alder, and old oak-trees grew right on the edge of the perpendicular bank, their roots deep down beneath the black leaf-mould, which here formed the bottom of the clear water.
“It must be here somewhere,” said Scarlett, one sunny afternoon, as they sat on the mossy roots of one of the great oaks, and idly picked off sheets of delicate green vegetable velvet and flakes of creamy and grey lichen to throw into the water.
“Yes, it must be here somewhere, of course; but I don’t see any use in getting scratched by briars for nothing. We never seem to get any nearer to it. Perhaps we were wrong, and it’s only a kind of well, after all.”
“No,” said Scarlett; “they would not make a well there.”
“Then we got muddled over the way we went, and, perhaps, while we are looking for the entrance this side, it’s over the other.”
“No,” said Scarlett again, “I don’t think that.”
“But if there had been a way in here from the lake, some one must have seen it before now. We should have noticed it when we were fishing or nesting. Or, if we had not seen it, your Nat or one of the other gardeners must have found it.”
“No, they must not. I don’t see any must about it. Perhaps it’s too cleverly hidden away, or I shouldn’t wonder if, since it was made, a tree had grown all over the entrance, and shut it right up.”
“And we shall never find it.”
“Not unless we cut the tree down.”