gher than the sides. It
looked as though the pent-up force within was striving all the time to
shoot up to the roof and any moment might succeed.

But the strangest thing of all was that with all this look of hidden power
there was no sound, and no drop of water overflowed the hollow basin. The
ground we stood on was a slab of solid rock and dry as bone,--no splash, no
sound, no drop outside,--only the silent and powerful up-thrust of the
water from below, the silent golden rings that tumbled to the sides of the
basin, and the constant expectation of something more which never came.

It was Carette's quick understanding that named it.

"It is like Krok," she whispered, and the word was said. It was all as like
Krok--not the outside man, but the inner Krok, dumb and powerful, silently
doing his appointed work--as anything that could be imagined.

"Yes," I said. "It is like Krok. It is very wonderful--running like that
all through, the ages--since the cave was made anyway--very wonderful."

She stooped to dip her hand and taste it, and then drew back.

"It looks as if it would bite," she said, and I took off the lid of the can
and scooped up a draught and drank it.

"The sweetest water I ever tasted, and cold as ice. It is as good as the
water at La Tour."

Then she drank also, and then she washed out the milk-can, but would not
pour the dirty water back into the basin. "It would be an offence," she
said simply, and I felt the same.

Then we left our can there and went on along the cleft, which grew narrower
and narrower till we could only go singly. And so we came at last into a
sound of waters in front, and going cautiously, found ourselves in a
somewhat wider place, with dull waves tumbling hollowly at our feet.

Carette crept to my side, and I held the lantern up and out, but we could
see only a rough, black-arched roof and ragged rock walls, and a welter of
black waves which broke sullenly against the shelving path on which we
stood, as though driven in there against their will.

"This is the water-cave Uncle George spoke of, but I don't see any light."

"Perhaps it's night outside," said Carette in a whisper. "Let us get back,
Phil. I don't like this place. The waves look as if they were dead."

So we went back the way we had come, and she pressed still closer to me as
we passed the little hollow in which the spring churned on, noiseless, and
ceaseless, and untiring, and seemed to look up at us with a kn