the rock dragon was
vastly more terrifying than difficult. Once well within the closely
drawn upper lip we could brace our backs against the roof and so have a
purchase for the foothold. Better still, when we had passed a
pike's-length beyond the lip the breathing space above the water grew
wider and higher till at length we could stand erect and come abreast to
lock arms and push on side by side.

From that the stream broadened and grew shallower with every step, and
presently we could hear it on ahead babbling over the stones like any
peaceful woodland brook. Then suddenly the dank and noisome air of the
cavern gave place to the pine-scented breath of the forest; and, looking
straight up, we could see the twinkling stars shining down upon us from
a narrow breadth of sky.

XXVII

HOW A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL

Dick pressed closer to me, and I could feel him drinking in deep drafts
of the grateful outer air.

"What new wonder is this?" he would ask, with something akin to awe in
his voice; but we must needs grope this way and that to feel out the
answer with our finger-tips.

When the answer was found, the mystery of the lost trail was solved most
simply. As we made out, we were in a deep crevice cut crosswise by the
stream which, issuing from a yawning cavern in the farther wall, was
quickly engulfed again by that lower archway we had just traversed. In
some upheaval of the earthquake age a huge slice of the mountain's face
had split off and settled away from the parent cliff to leave a deep
cleft open to the sky. One end of this crevice chasm--that toward the
upland valley--was choked and filled by the debris of later landslides;
but the lower end was open.

Through this lower end, as we made no doubt, the powder train had come,
turning from the Indian path in the gorge up the bed of the barrier
stream, turning again at the outer cavern mouth to squeeze in single
file between the thickly matted undergrowth and the cliff's face, and so
to pass around the split-off mass and come into the crevice rift.

How the sharp eyes of the old hunter, and those of the Catawba as well,
had missed the finding of this squeezing place where the cavalcade had
left the stream-bed, we could never guess; but on the chance that we
might yet need to know all the crooks and turnings of this outlet, we
felt our way quite around the masking cliff and down to the stream's
edge in the gorge.

That done we were ready f