On the rickety uprights (for the arbor like everything else on the old place was going to ruin under the alien blight) large baskets hung here and there. At intervals the structure sagged so that they had to stoop to pass under it, and here and there it was broken or uncovered and they caught glimpses of the sky.
They went over a little hillock and, still beneath the arbor, came upon a place where the vines had fallen away from the ramshackle trellis and formed a spreading mass upon the ground.
"You see?" whispered the girl in her pretty way. "Here Armand he climb. Here he hide to drop ze grapes down my neck—so. Bad boy! So zen it break—crash! He tumbled down. Ah—my pappa so angry. We must nevaire climb on ze trellis. You see? Here I sit and laugh—so much—when he tumble down!"
She smiled and for a moment seemed all happiness, but Tom Slade heard a sigh following close upon the smile. He did not know what to say so he simply said in his blunt way:
"I guess you had good times together."
"Now I will zhow you," she said, stooping to pull away the heavy tangle of vine.
Tom and Archer helped her and to their surprise there was revealed a trap-door about six feet in diameter with gigantic rusty hinges.
"Ziss is ze cave—you see?" she said, stooping to lift the door. Tom bent but she held him back. "Wait, I will tell you. Zen you can open it." For a moment pleasant recollections seemed to have the upper hand, and there was about her a touch of that buoyancy which had made her brother so attractive to sober Tom.
"Wait—zhest till I tell you. When I come back from ze school in England I have read ze story about 'Kidnap.' You know?"
"It's by Stevenson; I read it," said Archer.