Mark?"

"If you like. Want to find how far it goes?"

"Yes: I want to find how far it goes, master. Perhaps it opens
somewhere. I often think we must come out somewhere on the other side."

"That would be queer," said Mark thoughtfully; "but I don't think my
father would be pleased. Seem like making a way for the Darleys to come
in and attack us."

Dummy stopped short, and turned to stare open-mouthed at his young
chief.

"What a head you've got, Master Mark," he said. "I never thought of
that."

"Didn't you? Well, you see now: we don't want to find another way in."

"Yes, we do, if there is one, Master Mark, and stop it up."

Very little more was said as they went back, Mark becoming thoughtful,
and too tired to care about speaking. But that night he lay in bed
awake for some time, thinking about the visit to the cavernous mine, and
how it honeycombed the mountainous place: then about Dummy's witches,
and the fire and caldron, at the mouth of the hole by Ergles, a mighty
limestone ridge about three miles away. Then after a laugh at the easy
way in which the superstitious country people were alarmed, he fell
asleep, to begin a troublous dream, which was mixed up in a strangely
confused way with the great chasm in the mine, down which he had worked
his way to get at the ravens' nest: and then he started into
wakefulness, as he was falling down and down, hundreds upon hundreds of
feet, to find his face wet with perspiration, and that he had been lying
upon his back.

CHAPTER TEN.

IN A WASP'S NEST.

Days had passed, and strange reports were flying about the sparsely
inhabited neighbourhood. Fresh people had seen the witches in their
long gowns, and it was rumoured that if any one dared to make the
venture, they might be found crouching over their fire any dark, stormy
night on the slope of Ergles, where nobody ever went, for it was a
desolate waste, where a goat might have starved.

The tales grew like snowballs, as they passed from mouth to mouth, but
for the most part they were very unsubstantial in all points save one,
and that possessed substance; not only lambs, but sheep, had
disappeared, and in the case of a miner and his wife, who lived some
distance off, and who had been away for a week to a wedding beyond the
mountains, they returned to their solitary cottage to find that it had
been entered in their absence, and completely stripped of everything
movable, even to the bed, while the v