“But I say,” urged Reube, “there are folks back yonder who drink water like this all their lives. The wells in this plaster belt are all hard like this, and some of the people who drink from them live to over ninety.”
“That proves nothing,” said Will, “except that they are a long-lived stock. If they had sense enough to go somewhere else and drink soft water they might live to over a hundred!”
Reube cared little for argument, always finding it hard to know whether Will was in earnest or not. He lazily changed the subject.
“By the way,” he remarked, “now’s just the chance to visit the cave at the end of the Point!”
“Cave!” cried Will, jumping up from the grass. “What cave? How can there be a cave round here without me knowing it?”
“Why, I only heard of it myself last fall,” said Reube. “You see, the mouth of it isn’t uncovered till near low water; and nobody comes near this point at any time, there being nothing to come for, and the shoals and eddies so troublesome. I’ve sailed round here a good deal at high and half tide, but no one comes near it when tide’s out. You see all the broken rocks scattered away out across the flats from the Point. And as for the “honey pots” between them—well, old Chris Boltenhouse, who told me all about the place last fall, said they were a terror. You couldn’t step without getting into one. Chris also told me that the Acadians, at the time of their expulsion, had used the cave as a hiding place for some of their treasures, and that when he was a boy quite a lot of coin and silver ornaments had been found there.”
“Queer, too,” muttered Will, “how things like that drop out of people’s minds, come back, and are forgotten again! Well, let’s look into the hole while we’ve got time;” and the two ran hastily to the narrow end of the turf.
Over the slippery rocks below tide mark they had to move more deliberately, but in a short time they reached the foot of the promontory and stood on the verge of the flats not half an hour above low water. Very villainous indeed looked the flats, with the olive-hued menace spread over them on every hand. But there was no sign of a cave. Scanning the rocks minutely, our explorers skirted the whole front of the headland, but in vain. Then they started to retrace their steps, inveighing against the falsity of traditions. But now, their faces being turned, the rocky masses took on for them a new configuration, and they discovered a narrow strait, as it were, behind a jutting bowlder. It was a most unlikely-looking place for a cave entrance, but Will poked his nose into it curiously. The next moment he shouted:
“Found!”
Reube sprang to his side. There, behind the sentinel rock, was a narrow, triangular opening of about the height of a man. Its base, some four feet wide, was thickly silted with mud, and its sides dripped forbiddingly. Will stepped inside, and then turned.