‘He is in an old mine. He will not be discovered there. Even if the constables found the entrance, which is improbable, they would not take him, for he would retreat into one of the side passages and escape by an airhole in another part of the wood.’ ‘I will try what I can do. I dare say I might smuggle some food away from the house and put it behind the hedge, whence you could fetch it.’ ‘That is not enough. He must get away.’ ‘There is Jasper’s horse still with us. I will ask Jasper, and you can have that.’ ‘No,’ answered the boy, ‘that will not do. We must not take the road this time. We must try the water.’ ‘We have a boat,’ said Eve, ‘but papa would never allow it to be used.’ ‘Your papa will know nothing about it, nor the prudent Barbara, nor the solemn Jasper. You can get the key and let us have the boat.’ ‘I will do what I can, but’—as a sudden thought struck her—’Martin must let me have my ring again. I want it so much. My father has been asking for it.’ ‘How selfish you are!’ exclaimed the boy reproachfully. ‘Thinking of your own little troubles when a vast danger menaces our dear Martin. Come with me. You must see Martin and ask him yourself for that ring. I dare not speak of it; he values that ring above everything. You must plead for it yourself with that pretty mouth and those speaking eyes.’ ‘I must not; indeed I must not!’ ‘Why not? You will not be missed. No one will harm you. You should see the poor fellow, to what he is reduced by love for you. Yes, come and see him. He would never have been here, he would have been far away in safety, but he had the desire to see you again.’ ‘Indeed, I cannot accompany you.’ ‘Then you must do without the ring.’ ‘I want my ring again vastly. My father is cross because I have not got it, and I have promised to show it him. How can I keep my promise unless it be restored to me?’ ‘Come, come!’ said the boy impatiently. ‘Whilst you are talking you might have got half-way to his den.’ ‘I will only just speak to him,’ said Eve, ‘two words, and then run home.’ ‘To be sure. That will be ample—two words,’ sneered the boy, and led the way. The old mine adit was below the rocks near the river, and at no great distance from the old landing-place, where Jasper had recently constructed a boathouse. The ground about the entrance was thickly strewn with dead leaves, mixed with greenish shale thrown out of the copper mine, and so poisonous that no grass had been able to grow over it, though the mine had probably not been worked for a century or even more. But the mouth of the adit was now completely overgrown with brambles and fringed with ferns. The dogwood, now in flower, had thickly clambered near the entrance wherever the earth was not impregnated with copper and arsenic.