right hand, painted bright blue.

There was an instant volunteering flutter among certain green-clad girls
and lads in khaki, breezing up from the grass where they had languished;
others held back.

"I'd rather explore the cave--I love creepy caves--and we haven't been
half through it yet," said Pemrose Lorry.

Forthwith Stud, the Henkyl Hunter, decided that cave-exploiting was the
pastime for him; there was rarely a younger boy--Studart was barely
fifteen--who did not become the captive knight of this older girl with
the sky in her eyes under jet-black lashes!

Jessie, sister of Stoutheart, she of the thrush-song in her heart,
wanted to be near to the girl who was mate to a Thunder Bird, too; and
others were drawn by the same abstract birdlime--or else the bat-stirred
cave had lures.

"There--there's a secret lobby in it," said Stud, "a dark, rocky passage
leading off from that queer black, three-cornered fissure in the right
wall, ten feet from the ground--I guess nobody has ever explored it;
nobody has cracked the nut of what's behind that triangular crevice, so
high up!"

"Come--come; that sounds exciting, very exciting!" remarked Tanpa, the
Guardian, remaining behind too, as chaperon.

But her husband wheeled upon his jog-trot off after water, swinging his
galvanized iron bucket after a manner to give the air the blues.

"Well! I wouldn't try to crack the nut, solve the riddle, of what's
behind that queer-shaped crevice, Stud," he said. "It's black--black as
a tinker's pot in there. You wouldn't know what you were heading into!"

"Aw, gammon! I wouldn't be afraid to tackle that fissure--find out
what's back of it--although I'm not a Tin Scout--ha! ha!--out with the
whole toyshop to-day; all my monkey trappings," exploded a rough voice
suddenly from among a trio of clownish-looking boys who hovered,
vulture-like, on the edge of the picnic ground, transfixing with a
sanguinary eye the Baby, whose soft heart was of blueberry "duff."

"An' I tell you what's more, if I were to climb up an' in there, I'd
trust to my own 'bean' and a few matches, 'thout any gimcracks," craked
the boastful voice further, the special gewgaw on which the braggart
fixed his eye, at the moment, being the little Baldwin safety lamp, four
inches high, which Stud was just lighting, attached to the front of his
olive-green scout hat.

"Tr-rust to your own 'bean'--your own head--an' what's inside it! Well!
I'll admit it's fiery enough