"Let's look at the milk," I said, and tasted it and found it sweet.

"That's because the air here is so cool and even," said Carette.

"Well, I feel all the better, anyway, and so do you, I'll be bound. I'm
beginning to think, you know, that we were over fearful perhaps, and that
we need not have come hiding here at all."

"We'll know better when we hear what's going on outside. Your grandfather
and George Hamon are not men to be over fearful, and they thought it well."

"That is so," I said, feeling better at that.

"I wonder if it is day or night, and how long we've really been in here?"

"Long enough to be hungry, anyway," I said, heartily ready to eat. And we
fell to on Aunt Jeanne's ham and rabbit pie, Carette cutting up all I ate
into small pieces with my knife, since we had forgotten to bring any other.
We drank up the milk out of the big-bellied tin can, and never was there
sweeter milk or sweeter can, for Carette had first drink. And then, lest
it should get foul, we started off to find the fresh water to wash it out
and bring back a supply.

There was no mistaking the hollow place where the fresh water was. The
light of the lantern fell on many a narrow rift in the walls of rock on
either side, all sharp cracks and fissures, with rough-toothed edges, as
though the solid granite had been split with mighty hammer-strokes. The
seams were all awry, and the lines and cracks were all sharp and straight,
though running into one another and across in great confusion. And, of a
sudden, in the midst of this tangle of straight clefts and sharp-pointed
angles, we came on a little rounded niche where the wall was scooped out in
a graceful curve from about our own height to the ground. It was all as
smooth and softly rounded as if wrought by a mason's chisel, and as we
stood looking at it with surprise, because it was so different from all the
rest, a movement of the lantern showed us a greater wonder still. At our
feet, in a smooth round basin, bubbled the spring, and looked so like a
great dark eye looking up at us in a dumb fury that we both stood stark
still staring back at it.

The dark water rushed up from below in coils and writhings like the up-leap
of the tide in the Gouliot Pass, and our lantern set golden rings in it
which floated brokenly from the centre to the sides, and gave to it a
strange look of life and understanding. So strong was the pressure from
below that the centre of the little pool seemed hi