d man
Dewey!"

The boy laughed, "Pete knows. Come, Dad. Come, other man. Ain't
nothin' can get you here." He scrambled ahead of them into the low
tunnel. Some twenty feet from the entrance, the passage turned
sharply to the left and opened suddenly into a hallway along which
the shepherd could easily walk erect. Pete went briskly forward as
one on very familiar ground, his lantern lighting up the way
clearly for his two companions.

For some distance their course dipped downward at a gentle angle,
while the ceilings and sides dripped with moisture. Soon they
heard the sound of running water, and entering a wider room saw
sparkling in the lantern's light a stream that came from under the
rocky wall, crossed their path, and disappeared under the other
wall of the chamber. "Lost Creek!" ejaculated the shepherd, as he
picked his way over the stream on the big stones. And the boy
answered, "Pete knows. Pete knows."

From the bank of the creek the path climbed strongly upward, the
footing grew firmer, and the walls and ceiling drier; as they went
on, the passage, too, grew wider and higher, until they found
themselves in a large underground hallway that echoed loudly as
they walked. Overhead, pure white stalactites and frost-like
formations glittered in the light, and the walls were broken by
dark nooks and shelf-like ledges with here and there openings
leading who could tell where?

At the farther end of this hallway where the ceiling was highest,
the guide paused at the foot of a ledge against which rested a
rude ladder. The shepherd spoke again, "Dewey Bald?" he asked.
Pete nodded, and began to climb the ladder.

Another room, and another ledge; then a long narrow passage, the
ceiling of which was so high that it was beyond the lantern light;
then a series of ledges, and they saw that they were climbing from
shelf to shelf on one side of an underground canon.
Following along the edge of the chasm, the doctor pushed a stone
over the brink, and they heard it go bounding from ledge to ledge
into the dark heart of the mountain. "No bottom, Daniel. Blast it
all, no bottom to it! What would Sarah and the girls say?"

They climbed one more ladder and then turned from the canon
into another great chamber, the largest they had entered. The
floor was perfectly dry; the air, too, was dry and pure; and, from
what seemed to be the opposite side of the huge cavern, a light
gleamed like a red eye in the darkness. They were evid