Again did her wide-open, staring eyes, under their black lashes, sport a Blue Peter, the flag of adventure.
“Oh! he’s plucky, anyhow. I wonder what he’ll find in there?” her palms were laid together upon a spicy filling of excitement. “He really is daring–awfully daring, you know!”
“Ha! Courage cobweb-weed!” muttered Stud laconically. “Well–well, he’ll have tears in his eyes before I go after him!”
And–with that–there was the rasp of a third “niggling” match, faintly-heard, far in, a momentary reflection, a tiny glance-coal, in the fissure’s leering mouth! And–and, following that, a shriek!
A shriek, headlong, sinking and pitching–dying like a falling star, as if some clutch were stifling it.
“Hea-vens!” The girls, blanching, shrank against the opposite cave-wall, which shuddered behind them.
A bat, flying low, a winged Fear, brushed Tanpa’s cheek, as she stood, transfixed,–and her cry was almost as hysterical as theirs.
In the blackness of that Tinker’s Pot behind the looming fissure, were there other things–other things besides a boy, a broken braggart of a boy?
Was Death in the pot with him? Had he sipped of its mystery–only to perish? Death–it seemed a raving possibility–in the shape of some wild animal, perhaps–a live, a clutching claw!
Tales were always current among the mountains, trappers’ tales–and most of them airy “traveler’s yarns”, too–of strange tracks seen in lonely spots, of lynx and bobcat; and even of the young and roving panther.