"It's an idea of mine. You know, everybody goes to Lingham Cave; it's a regular show place. You pay your shilling, and you're taken round by a guide who tells you where to step, and not to knock your head, and all that kind of stuff, and prates away about geology and natural curiosities and the rest of it, as if he'd learnt it off like a lesson. Well, instead of going where everybody else goes, I think it would be much better fun to explore a place of our own. There's another cave at the other side of Lingham, on the spur of Whernscar. I saw the entrance to it last Friday, when I walked over with Dr. Shaw. He pointed it out to me, and said very few people had been down it, but it was quite as fine as the other, and had splendid--what do you call those thingumgigs?--oh yes, stalactites, and an underground waterfall." [Illustration: A LESSON IN GOLF] "Is there a guide there?" asked Eric. "No; that's the best of it--no shillings to pay, and no bothering lecture. People fight shy of it because it's so out of the way and rather difficult to go down--the passage is narrow, and there's one bad place. I thought if we had a rope, though, we could manage it easily; and look! I've brought all these candles and three boxes of matches." "It would be ripping to see an underground waterfall," said Eric. "There isn't one in Lingham Cave." "Yes; we might never get such an opportunity again. Who votes for Whernscar?" "I do," said Dorothy promptly. The idea of an adventure tempted her. She was always attracted by the unknown. "I suppose we should be all right? It will be quite safe, I mean?" queried Gabrielle, a little doubtfully. "Right as a trivet, with a rope and candles," replied Percy. "I expect if this cave were nearer Lingham village it would be more popular than the other. It's fearfully far from the station, though, which doesn't suit trippers." "We're trippers ourselves if we make a trial trip," laughed Eric. All the four young people were excited at the prospect of exploring a little-known cavern without the assistance of a guide. They felt like a band of pioneers in a fresh country, or the discoverers of a new continent. None of them in the least realized the risk of the proceeding, and no older person was there to preach wisdom. Percy, who had been over the fells before, knew the way, and therefore assumed the direction of the party. Instead of going down to Lingham, they turned up the hill instead, and struck across the spur of Whernscar. It was a grim, desolate part of the country; the bare rocks, upheaved in strange shapes and unclothed by any greenery, seemed like the skeleton of the earth exposed to view. Stone walls took the place of hedges, and there was scarcely a human habitation within sight. Scattered here and there over the moorland were curious natural pits called "potholes", deep and dark as wells, and with a sound of rushing water at the bottom. Into one of these a small stream emptied itself, and was swallowed up bodily.