the opposite.

"Nobody would be such a noodle as to build his back-door right down in
the water," he said, "unless he meant the place for a bath. No; we
shall find that doorway out in the wood somewhere, you mark my words,
Scar. I dare say, if we were to take billhooks and cut and hack away
the branches, we should find it soon enough."

Scarlett shook his head, but joined in the search, one which, in spite
of their peering about, proved to be in vain, and, after being well
scratched by brambles and briars, Scarlett had his own way again, and
they began to hunt the shore.

The broad sheet of water ran up in quite a bay toward the fine old
English mansion, and round this bay were dense clumps of hazels, patches
of alder, and old oak-trees grew right on the edge of the perpendicular
bank, their roots deep down beneath the black leaf-mould, which here
formed the bottom of the clear water.

"It must be here somewhere," said Scarlett, one sunny afternoon, as they
sat on the mossy roots of one of the great oaks, and idly picked off
sheets of delicate green vegetable velvet and flakes of creamy and grey
lichen to throw into the water.

"Yes, it must be here somewhere, of course; but I don't see any use in
getting scratched by briars for nothing. We never seem to get any
nearer to it. Perhaps we were wrong, and it's only a kind of well,
after all."

"No," said Scarlett; "they would not make a well there."

"Then we got muddled over the way we went, and, perhaps, while we are
looking for the entrance this side, it's over the other."

"No," said Scarlett again, "I don't think that."

"But if there had been a way in here from the lake, some one must have
seen it before now. We should have noticed it when we were fishing or
nesting. Or, if we had not seen it, your Nat or one of the other
gardeners must have found it."

"No, they must not. I don't see any must about it. Perhaps it's too
cleverly hidden away, or I shouldn't wonder if, since it was made, a
tree had grown all over the entrance, and shut it right up."

"And we shall never find it."

"Not unless we cut the tree down."

"And, of course, we don't know which tree to cut."

"And if we did, my father would not have a tree touched on any account.
Remember how angry he was with the wind?"

"What, when it blew down the big elm?"

"Yes."

There was a pause.

"I say," said Fred, yawning, "let's give it up. What do we care about
where the passage com