count, and made a discovery
which she now hoped to turn to account.

The canoe touched at the spot she pointed out, and they stepped ashore.
She said that her parent strolled off to the left, toward a passage
which she showed, and which she had entered with him several times
before, but from which he seemed desirous to exclude her on the
occasion named.

It was while he was absent at that time, that Ariel walked some
distance to the right. She clambered up the rocks a little way to a
clump of bushes. She was examining a species of crimson berry, growing
upon them, when she observed a passage, which she followed far enough
to find that it led into a large cavern, whose full extent she did not
attempt to learn. She withdrew, and, fearful of offending the king,
told him nothing about it when he returned and found her with the boat.

Ariel was confident that neither her parent nor any of her people knew
of her discovery, and she now proposed to Ashman that they should enter
the strange cavern, and remain until the present danger was over. She
believed that if her friends or enemies, as they might be considered,
did not discover them soon, they would conclude that they had
voluntarily met death together, and would give up the hunt.

Ashman was struck with the sagacity of the lady, and eagerly agreed to
her suggestion. It would never do to leave the canoe as a tell-tale,
and he gave it a shove which carried it far out on the lake.
Discovered in that situation, no one could tell what point on the shore
it had touched, and, being adrift, near the middle of the lake, it
would suggest the theory of suicide, which they were anxious to impress
upon their pursuers.

Carefully picking their way through the mass of brush and undergrowth
which showed remarkable vigor, considering that the revivifying
sunlight never touched it, Ashman readily found the opening described
by his companion.

It was just broad enough to allow the passage of their bodies, its
height being such that they could move by stooping slightly. Holding
his Winchester in hand, he led the way with Ariel pressing him close.

The same fact was noticeable that struck him when paddling through the
tunnel connecting the outer and the underground lake. The light
increased as they progressed until everything was seen with a
distinctness hardly less than that shown in the water they had just
left behind them.

Suddenly Ashman paused with an expression of amaze