“Well! They’re not brick-bats,” came reassuringly from one of the boys, as the Togetherers ranged through the outer part of that vast Tory Cave–once the hiding-place of a political refugee, whose spirit seemed flitting among them in the filmy cave-fog which, dank and mournful, clung about the margin of that strange lake of fresh water where blind fish played.
Presumably fed by that cloistered brooklet, whose cell, far in, in an impenetrable recess, no human foot had ever trod, the lakelet had the floor to itself, so to speak, so that in places scouts with their lamps, and girls pairing off with their exploring brothers, one piloting eye between them, had difficulty in skirting it–without a ducking.
“Whew! a ducking in the dark–a cave-bath–horrible!” cried Pemrose. “Oh, mer-rcy! what–what is it?”
“Bah! Only a garter snake–a pretty fellow,” laughed Studley, picking the slim, striped thing up from a corner of the blind lake where it was amphibiously basking, and letting it curl around his khaki arm, investigating the merit badges of the patrol leader.
The green and red of the life-saver’s embroidered badge, the crossed flags of the expert signaler, the white plow of the husbandman, they enlivened the gloom a wee bit, winking up at the safety lamp hooked to his hat-band, as he bent over the illumined reptile.
But they did not challenge it as did the flash of an apricot sweater, blood-red in the ruby lamplight, of a black and yellow cap, several yellow and black caps, suddenly–eagerly–thrust near.
“He’s big–big for a garter, isn’t he, Buddy?” remarked a voice that did not come from the ranks of Togetherers, of Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls, excitedly scrutinizing Stud’s novel armlet.
Neither–neither was it the voice of the nickum, so much Pemrose knew, as she edged coldly a little away,–a little nearer to the dim and sighing lake-edge.
Yet he was among them, those gaudy big boys, whose flare of color merely striped the cave-dusk, like the dingy markings upon the snake’s squirming back.
He actually had his armful of mayflowers, too, the nickum, not the snake; passë mayflowers, with the tan of decay on them, was nursing them carefully, as if they were part of a long lost heritage into which he had lately come–as if he were afraid to lay them down lest some alien should snatch them from him.