They had gone down to a point near to the village, but shut away from it by intervening woods, where, on the side of the stream opposite to that from which they had set forth, was another small inlet, into which the boat had been steered.
There was an easy, natural landing, on a bit of bold shore, where a table of rock came out into the water, against the edge of which the boat lay without difficulty.
The girls were here helped out, and conducted a short distance up into the woods. Cordelia knew that the sloping foot of Witch’s Crag was not a great way off, and a few moments later, when they had stopped, and Tryon told them they must be blindfolded, she was able to give a pretty close guess as to their destination.
“Why should you wish to blind us?” she asked. “Have you a secret which you are afraid we might discover?”
“Never mind my reason. I choose that you shall be hoodwinked. It will not hurt you; and I promise you no indignity shall be offered while you are in that situation.”
For one brief moment our heroine’s thoughts were deep and rapid; the result was she submitted without opposition and without further remark.
The kerchiefs which had been before bound over their mouths were now bound tightly over their eyes, after which they moved on; and ere long, as she had anticipated, they emerged from the wood upon the rough and ragged slope of the crag.
They found a very good path, however, and were able to proceed without difficulty. Up—up—up, the gradual slope, Cordelia judged, very nearly half a mile—and then they stopped; and from the change in the feeling of the air she was confident they had entered one of the caves, which she had several times visited in company with Percy Maitland.
She wondered could it be that into which she and her friends had looked a few days before from the end of the subterranean passage they had explored. If it should so prove, then she might be taken into a place not unknown to her. She was destined, however, to a disappointment of which she had not dreamed.
She heard words spoken between her captors, and presently she heard a sound as of the very slight creaking of a heavy door on its hinges.