"Oh, I do, I do," said Sahwah, taking off her shoes and stockings and wading into the limpid stream. Soon she was dancing in the water, frolicking like a nixie, catching the water up in her hands and tossing it into the air and then darting out from beneath it before it could fall upon her. Veronica laughed and clapped her hands as she watched Sahwah, and wished she were an artist that she might paint the picture.
Finally they came to a place where the little stream poured down over a high rock and ran through a broad gully, widening into a great pond in the natural basin, which was like a huge bowl scooped out of rock.
"This must be the place they call the Devil's Punch Bowl that Nyoda told us about," said Sahwah. "See, it looks just like a punch bowl."
"I wonder if it's very deep," said Veronica, peering into the water from a safe distance away from the edge.
"Shall I dive in and find out?" asked Sahwah.
"Oh, don't, don't," said Veronica, catching hold of her arm.
"Don't worry, you precious old goosie," said Sahwah, laughing. "I didn't mean really. I was only in fun. Did you think I was going in with my clothes on? It must be deep, though, or the Indian couldn't have jumped in. That must be the rock up there he jumped from," she said, indicating a flat, platform-like rock that overhung the gully some forty feet above their heads. "Don't you remember Nyoda telling about it; how the soldiers were chasing this Indian and he got out on that rock and dove down into the Punch Bowl and swam under water and they never thought of looking down there for him?"
Both looked at the rock jutting out over the water, and shuddered at the height of the drop. At the far side of the gully the pond became a brook again and flowed on in a narrow channel the same as before. The woods were denser on this side of the gully and there was less sunlight filtering down through the branches. Several times they came upon clusters of fragile, pale Indian pipes growing out of wet, decayed stumps.
"Oh, it's nice here," breathed Veronica, revelling in the coolness.
"'This is the forest primeval,'" quoted Sahwah,