"Oh, Ishmael!" she exclaimed, with a sigh of happiness and admiration, "I should think nobody in the world knows as much as you!"
Never before had Ishmael had such words spoken to him, and he felt almost dizzy. He began to think what other wonders he could show or tell to her. Yes, there were more wonderful things to disclose to her admiring eyes. The woods were beautiful; but he knew what was hidden underground as well as what lay open to the eye of day. For underneath their feet the earth was honeycombed with long, deserted galleries, and roadways, and tunnels, where ages ago the limestone had been dug, and brought to the surface by level shafts opening on the hill slopes. Far away from the light of the sun, these subterranean paths ran in many windings and twistings. Even on the surface there were indications of them in basin-like hollows of varying depths and sizes, where the treacherous ground had sunk in.
Some of these hollows were filled with water, forming little pools, which glistened up to the sun, while others were dry basins green with turf and coltsfoot, amongst which wild strawberries grew. Ishmael and Elsie had busily gathered the small red fruit, and strung it upon long bents of grass, to keep it as a dessert to the dinner they were going to eat in the woods. Ishmael hastily formed a surprise for Elsie. When the right minute came, when she was tired and hungry, and the sun beat hotly upon them, he would take her to the cool shelter of a cave near at hand, where he could show to her the entrance into the old limestone quarry.
They came at length to a broad open glade, stretching far away between two rows of trees, which was the famous spot for shooting-bouts in the autumn, when the squire's visitors spent whole days in sport. Here in the long, untrodden grass lay the old cartridge-cases thrown hastily away last year. Ishmael told Elsie how the cracking of the guns rang all day long, and how the smell of the gunpowder and its thick smoke tainted the sweet air; and how, at night, when all was over, there seemed a sorrowful silence in the wood, as if its timorous inhabitants had been scared into utter terror.
"And the rabbits keep in their burrows," said Ishmael, "and don't come out to play after sunset, like they do other nights, ay, by hundreds and thousands, running after one another, and tumbling about like us on the green, when we've a holiday; and you can see their little white pads tossing about in the dusk. If you sit very still they'll come a'most to your feet. And the bats fly about, and the cockchafers, and big white owls, that make no noise when they fly. I'll show you our big owl at home before you go home to-night."
They were sauntering along the glade slowly, when suddenly, from under their very feet, as it seemed to Elsie, there sprang up, with a loud whirr and a great fluttering of wings, a pheasant which had been sitting close on her nest among the long grass, till their feet nearly touched her. Elsie uttered a little scream of fright; but Ishmael went down on his knees in a moment, parting the tangled grass which hid the nest. There lay a cluster of brown eggs, ten of them, packed closely together, and warm with the brooding-heat of the mother-hen.
"Oh!" cried Elsie, eagerly. "Can't we have some of them for dinner? Only we can't cook them, you know, without a fire and a saucepan."
"Ay, but we can!" answered Ishmael, proud of doing what seemed impossible to his companion. "We can make a fire, and roast 'em in the ashes. We won't take more than four, two apiece; and I can tell which are the newest laid. See, I've got a match in my pocket, and we'll pick some sticks, and light a fire in a place I know of, where nobody can ever find us."
Gathering up the sticks as they went along, he led Elsie to his cave. It was situated about half-way down a steep slope which was overgrown with hazel bushes and brambles. The low archway of the entrance was little more than a yard high, and was quite concealed by the brushwood. Within, the roof rose to a good height, and the floor of limestone was dry, forming altogether a pleasant retreat, large enough to hold from twenty to thirty persons. A green twilight reached them through the closely-interwoven network of underwood; and a delicious coolness made it the pleasantest place possible now the sun was so high in the blue sky.
"Look, Elsie," said Ishmael, leading her to the back of the cave, where a small hole, not unlike a large rabbit-burrow, led darkly into some space beyond, "I've crawled through there many a time; and if it wasn't for your frock, we'd go now—you and me. Oh, it goes for miles and miles under the wood; and sometimes there's a little bit o' light coming through cracks in the ground; and there are pools all black and still, with just a tiny sparkle on them to show where they are; and there are glistening stones hanging down from the roof, and drops o' water always falling, falling from them. Oh, I wish you were a boy, and could creep in along with me!"