erested.

"Yes, solid stone--rock; and every here and there you could see curious
shapes, just as if water had been running down, and it had all been
turned into stone."

"I should like to go and see a place like that," said Scarlett.

"Yes; I shouldn't mind seeing a cave like that. Father says it went in
for miles, and nobody had ever got to the end of it, for it branched off
into narrow slits, and sometimes you were walking on shelves, and you
could hold the candle over and look down horrible holes that were nobody
knows how deep, and there you could hear the water gurgling at the
bottom, and hissing and splashing, and--Oh!"

"Scar!" yelled Fred, making a dash at his companion just in time to
catch him by the arm as he suddenly dropped down through a narrow
opening in the midst of the short green turf over which they were
walking.

So narrow was the opening, and so nearly hidden by grass and heath, that
Scarlett had no difficulty in supporting himself by spreading out his
arms, as soon as he had recovered from the first startling effect of his
slip.

But he did not stop many minutes in this position. Fred hung on to his
arm. He threw himself sidewise, grasped tightly hold of a stout branch
of heath, and scrambled out.

"Who'd have thought of there being a hole like that?" said Scarlett, as
soon as he was safe. "But I don't suppose it's very deep, after all.
Got a stone?"

"No. Listen."

Fred had thrown himself upon his breast, and craned his neck over the
place, trying to peer down, but only into darkness, the hole evidently
not going down straight; it being, in fact, a narrow crack, such as he
had described in telling of the Derbyshire cavern.

Scarlett, who looked rather white from the shock he had received, joined
his companion, and bent down to listen.

"Hear that?" said Fred in a whisper.

"Yes; water."

"Water! Yes, of course; but listen again."

They kept silence, and there ascended from below, through the almost
hidden crevice, a low whisper of an echoing roar, which died away in a
peculiar hissing sound that was thrilling in its strange suggestiveness.

"There must be a waterfall somewhere below there," said Scarlett at
last.

"Why, don't you know what it is?"

"No."

"The sea. Didn't think it was the end of your passage, did you?"

"What there? Nonsense!"

"Yes, it's the cave; and the sea runs right up here."

"It couldn't; it's too far away."

"I don't care; that's the