‘Hungry! Yes, we are likely to be that, before we are found,’ half-petulantly interrupted Lady Alice. And then there was no more said for a longer time than before.
Ethel’s mind was busy as she sat side by side with her pupil on the rough-hewn bench of stone that had been the death-bed of the luckless Jacobite refugee. How little had she thought, when listening an hour or two ago, to the legend of John Grahame’s death, that she who told and she who hearkened to the tale would soon be shut up in that dismal lair, to suffer hardship, perhaps even to—— No, not to die, so near to home and friends; that was a supposition too wild to be harboured! They must be sought out, found, delivered from the prison to which accident had consigned them. Some one would pass. Some one might even then be within hearing, and be rambling on all-unconscious of the predicament of those within. So strongly did the idea that friendly ears might be near present itself to Ethel, that she started to her feet, calling aloud again and again for help. The hollow echoes of the cave returned the sound, as though in mockery, while Lady Alice sat mute and listless on the rocky bench. Presently she too sprang up. ‘I cannot bear it,’ cried the young girl, in her quick impetuous way. ‘I would sooner run the risk of fifty deaths than remain here, listening to the dreadful drip, drip, of the water as it falls into the pool or the brook beneath. We can’t, now the bridge is gone, cross the fissure. But perhaps, if you would help me, I might manage to scramble to the top of the rocks above here where the light comes down, and at any rate wave a handkerchief, or do something to attract attention if any one comes near.’
Ethel glanced up at the ragged rocks draped with weed and bramble, and then down at the gaping chasm, into which a false step would probably hurl any aspirant who should prove unequal to the attempt.
‘It is for me to try it, my dear, not you,’ she said quietly, but with a resolution that was not to be shaken. ‘I am taller and stronger; and besides, how could I meet the Countess again if I allowed you to run into a danger I shrank from?’ And without further prelude Ethel grasped a tough tendril of the ivy that hung within reach, and by clinging to every crevice or angle of the rock that could yield support to foot or hand, succeeded in gaining a ledge of stone, above which a tall slender hazel shot up into the free air. But to climb the few feet of bare stone above her was impossible. ‘It is idle; I cannot do it,’ she said sadly.
It did indeed begin to seem a hopeless case, that is supposing that young Lady Alice was correct in her estimate of the loneliness of the spot and of the unlikelihood of succour.
‘I cannot reach the top; the rock is as steep as a wall,’ said Ethel, again looking down from amidst the ferns and foxgloves, the ivy trails and ropes of bramble, that half-filled the aperture.
‘That tall nut-tree, it is close to your hand,’ cried the quick-witted young damsel below. ‘Could you not pull it towards you, tie your handkerchief to the topmost bough, and let it spring up again? That would give us a chance, should any one come near.’
With some difficulty Ethel succeeded in grasping the tough stem of the tall hazel, and bending it until she was able to make fast her handkerchief, as Alice had suggested, to the uppermost twigs. Up sprang the slender stem again the instant it was released, and the white pennon fluttered out, clear of the rocks, in the moorland breeze.
‘We have hoisted our flag,’ said Lady Alice blithely, ‘to let them know we are at home.’ But as hour after hour went by, and the longed-for help came not, and the increasing gloom of the faint cool light that filled the grotto told of the waning of the day, the spirits of Ethel’s young charge lost their buoyancy.
‘I wish at least,’ she said peevishly, ‘that tiresome dripping of the water would but stop. I feel as though it would drive me mad. Why not try the jump back over the chasm? Even if one fell in, it would be better so than to die by inches.’