y was standing. It was a little way from the path the two
Curlytops had walked along through the woods--the path leading from the
spring.

"I just fell in it, I told you," Ted answered. "I was walking along,
and, all at once, I slipped down through the dried leaves. First I
thought I was going down in a big hole, but it isn't over my head and a
lot of leaves went down with me, so I didn't get jounced hardly at all."

Jan went to the edge and looked down in the hole. It seemed to be a
large one in between two big rocks, and Ted showed her where the hole
slanted downward and went farther underground. It was dark there, and
Jan made up her mind she would never go into it, even if Ted did.

"You'd better come up," she said at last. "Maybe mother wouldn't like
it. Besides, there might be snakes down in there."

"Oh! I didn't think about them!" exclaimed Ted, and he tried to scramble
up, but it was not so easy as he had hoped. He was a little excited,
too, since Janet had spoken of snakes. Teddy did not like them, and they
might be in among the leaves that had fallen down into the hole with
him.

"Can't you get up?" Jan asked, when her brother had slipped back two or
three times.

"Maybe I could if you'd let me take hold of your hand," suggested Teddy.

"Then you'd pull me in, and we'd both be down there."

Ted saw that this was so. He tried again to get out, but could not, for
mixed with the leaves were many dry, brown pine needles from the trees
growing overhead; and if you have ever been in the woods you know how
slippery pine needles are when the ground is covered with them. Teddy
slipped back again and again.

"Oh, Ted! can't you _ever_ get up?" asked Janet, almost ready to cry.

"Oh. I'll get out somehow," he said. Then dangling down from a tree
behind his sister, he saw a long wild grapevine, which was almost like
a piece of rope.

"If I had hold of that I could pull myself out," Teddy said. "See if you
can reach it to me, Jan."

After two or three trials his sister did this. Then, holding to a loose
end of the grapevine while the other end was twined fast round a tree,
Teddy pulled himself out of the hole. Once on firm ground he made the
loose end of the grapevine fast to a stone that lay near the edge of the
hole.

"What made you do that?" asked Janet.

"So the next time I get down there I can pull myself out," Teddy
answered.

"Are you going down there again?" Jan queried.

"Course I am!" declar