ely.

"_Tenez_!" exclaimed the Frenchman, quick to catch her mood. "I will go
to find the good Cinders. He is not far."

"And leave me!" said Chris quickly.

"_Eh bien_! Let us remain here."

"And leave Cinders!" said Chris.

He smiled and shrugged his shoulders, then stooped without further words
and kindled his lamp.

The rain was still beating in fierce grey gusts over the sea and
pattering heavily upon the shingle. The waves broke with a sullen
roaring. Evidently a gale was rising.

Chris, with her face to the darkness of the cave, shivered again. Somehow
her spirit of adventure was dashed.

The flame of Bertrand's lamp shone vaguely inwards, revealing a narrow
passage that wound between rugged cliff-walls into darkness. The rock
gleamed black and shiny on all sides. Underfoot were stones of all shapes
and sizes, worn smooth by the sea.

"What a ghastly place!" whispered Chris, and something seemed to catch
the whisper and repeat it sibilantly a great many times as if learning it
off by heart.

"Permit me to precede you," said Bertrand. "You will find it not so
narrow in a moment. If you look behind you, you will see the sea as in
the frame of a picture. It is beautiful, is it not?"

His soft voice and casual words reassured her. She looked and admired,
though the sea was grey and the shore all blurred with rain.

"There will be a rainbow soon," he said. "See! It grows more light
already."

But he was looking at her as he spoke, though his glance fell directly
she turned towards him.

"Do you come here often?" she asked.

"But very often," he said.

"And what do you do here?"

"I will show you by and bye."

"Very well," she said eagerly. "Then we won't go any farther when we have
found Cinders."

But this last suggestion was not so easy of accomplishment. The darkness
had swallowed Cinders as completely as though the jaws of the dragon had
closed upon him.

"Where can he be?" said Chris, a quiver of distress in her voice.

"Have no fear! We will find him," Bertrand assured her.

He moved forward, holding the lantern to guide her. She kept very close
to him, especially when a curve in the passage hid the entrance behind
her. Her fancy for exploring was rapidly dwindling.

As he had told her, the passage soon widened. They emerged into a cave of
some size and considerable height.

"He will be here," announced Bertrand, with conviction.

But he was mistaken; Cinders was nowhere to be s