They neither moved nor spoke. Somehow the Twins expected them to speak and say something very reproving. They looked just that way. The Twins didn’t wait to find out what it would be, however. They went crashing through the bushes and back to the top of the rock as fast as they could go.
That afternoon, when Hawk-Eye and Limberleg came home, bringing a young deer on their shoulders, the children told them about the cave and pointed it out from the top of the rock. Hawk-Eye at once threw down the deer and made a fire. Then he took a flaming torch in one hand and his spear in the other and started down the bluff.
“How did you get to the cave?” he asked Firetop.
“We went part way down the bluff and fell in,” said Firetop.
Hawk-Eye laughed. “I’ll see if I can’t find a better way,” he said.
He crept cautiously down the steep slope, and when he reached the cave, he held his torch above his head so as to light the inside of it, and with his other hand he held his spear, ready to kill any wild animal that might be living in it. It was just the sort of cave where one might expect to find wolves at least.
The owls came hooting out again just as they had when Firetop visited them, but nothing else stirred, and Hawk-Eye went boldly in. The cave was quite large, and as it was in a chalk cliff, it was white and clean except where the owls had made their nests.
Hawk-Eye didn’t like the looks of owls. He didn’t like their staring ways. So he tore up their nests and threw them down the bluff.
Then he came out of the cave and began to climb about on the slope, as if he were searching for something. It was not long before he gave a shout of joy and beckoned to Limberleg and the Twins, who were watching him eagerly.