e sandwiches, for goodness' sake, and stop her silly mouth,"
said Peter, not quite unkindly. "Look here," he added, turning to
Bobbie, "perhaps we'd better have one each, too. We may need all our
strength. Not more than one, though. There's no time."

"What?" asked Bobbie, her mouth already full, for she was just as hungry
as Phyllis.

"Don't you see," replied Peter, impressively, "that red-jerseyed hound
has had an accident--that's what it is. Perhaps even as we speak he's
lying with his head on the metals, an unresisting prey to any passing
express--"

"Oh, don't try to talk like a book," cried Bobbie, bolting what was left
of her sandwich; "come on. Phil, keep close behind me, and if a train
comes, stand flat against the tunnel wall and hold your petticoats close
to you."

"Give me one more sandwich," pleaded Phyllis, "and I will."

"I'm going first," said Peter; "it was my idea," and he went.

Of course you know what going into a tunnel is like? The engine gives
a scream and then suddenly the noise of the running, rattling train
changes and grows different and much louder. Grown-up people pull up the
windows and hold them by the strap. The railway carriage suddenly grows
like night--with lamps, of course, unless you are in a slow local train,
in which case lamps are not always provided. Then by and by the darkness
outside the carriage window is touched by puffs of cloudy whiteness,
then you see a blue light on the walls of the tunnel, then the sound of
the moving train changes once more, and you are out in the good open air
again, and grown-ups let the straps go. The windows, all dim with the
yellow breath of the tunnel, rattle down into their places, and you see
once more the dip and catch of the telegraph wires beside the line, and
the straight-cut hawthorn hedges with the tiny baby trees growing up out
of them every thirty yards.

All this, of course, is what a tunnel means when you are in a train. But
everything is quite different when you walk into a tunnel on your own
feet, and tread on shifting, sliding stones and gravel on a path that
curves downwards from the shining metals to the wall. Then you see
slimy, oozy trickles of water running down the inside of the tunnel,
and you notice that the bricks are not red or brown, as they are at the
tunnel's mouth, but dull, sticky, sickly green. Your voice, when you
speak, is quite changed from what it was out in the sunshine, and it is
a long time before the