thought, forgetting the dog for
the moment. "How strange that all was! Could it really have been a
dream?"

"Yes, it must have been, or else he would have gone and told his
captain, and they would have come and searched the cellar, and there
would have been sad trouble."

She turned her eyes from the sea, and began to search the green slopes
around, and then all at once she uttered a cry of joy as she could
sight, on the highest slope right at the end of the valley, a white
speck which suddenly appeared out of the earth, and then stood out clear
on the green turf, and seemed to be looking about before turning and
plunging down again.

It was quite half a mile away, and her call was in vain, and she began
to descend diagonally into the hollow, the tears in her eyes, but a
smile of content on her lips.

"Oh, you bad dog," she cried merrily, "how I will punish you!" and she
stooped and picked a couple of mushrooms, quite happy again, and even
sang a scrap of a country ditty in a pretty bird-like voice as she came
to a bramble clump, and went on staining her fingers.

By degrees she passed the end of the hollow, leaving all the
blackberries behind, and now, only pausing to pick a mushroom here and
there, she began to ascend the slope toward where she had seen the dog.

"It is getting nearer the edge of the cliff," she said; "but it slopes
up, and not down. Ah, I see you, sir. Come here directly! Grip!
Grip!"

The dog had suddenly made his appearance about fifty yards in front,
right as it were out of the grassy slope, to stand barking loudly for a
few moments before turning tail and plunging down again.

"Oh, how tiresome!" she cried. "Grip! Grip!"

But, as the dog would not come to her, she went on, knowing perfectly
well that he had gone down one of the old stone pits, and quite prepared
to stand at last gazing into a hole which inclined rapidly into the
hillside, but was as usual provided with rough stones placed step-wise,
and leading the way into darkness beneath a fern-fringed arch, while the
whole place was almost entirely choked-up with the luxuriantly growing
brambles.

"He has found a rabbit," she thought to herself, as her eyes wandered
about the sides of the pit, and brightened at the sight of the abundant
clusters of blackberries, finer and riper than any she had yet secured.

"I wish I was not so frightened of these places," she said to herself.
"Why, I could fill a basket here, and there