"I just fell in it, I told you," Ted answered. "I was walking along, and, all at once, I slipped down through the dried leaves. First I thought I was going down in a big hole, but it isn't over my head and a lot of leaves went down with me, so I didn't get jounced hardly at all."
Jan went to the edge and looked down in the hole. It seemed to be a large one in between two big rocks, and Ted showed her where the hole slanted downward and went farther underground. It was dark there, and Jan made up her mind she would never go into it, even if Ted did.
"You'd better come up," she said at last. "Maybe mother wouldn't like it. Besides, there might be snakes down in there."
"Oh! I didn't think about them!" exclaimed Ted, and he tried to scramble up, but it was not so easy as he had hoped. He was a little excited, too, since Janet had spoken of snakes. Teddy did not like them, and they might be in among the leaves that had fallen down into the hole with him.
"Can't you get up?" Jan asked, when her brother had slipped back two or three times.
"Maybe I could if you'd let me take hold of your hand," suggested
Teddy.
"Then you'd pull me in, and we'd both be down there."
Ted saw that this was so. He tried again to get out, but could not, for mixed with the leaves were many dry, brown pine needles from the trees growing overhead; and if you have ever been in the woods you know how slippery pine needles are when the ground is covered with them. Teddy slipped back again and again.
"Oh, Ted! can't you ever get up?" asked Janet, almost ready to cry.
"Oh, I'll get out somehow," he said. Then dangling down from a tree behind his sister, he saw a long wild grapevine, which was almost like a piece of rope.