Spite had come upon the door of a cave or tunnel. When a few more grains of sand had been thrown aside he lifted the tissue door and entered. It was dark at first, and there was a musty smell in the air. Spite did not care for that, and in a moment ran to the far end of the cave and back again. This strange place had once been the home of a Burrow Pixie. It was a tunnel scooped out of the sandy earth.[H] It ran horizontally for a short way, and then sloped downward. It was lined around the sides, top and bottom with a tight silken tube, and was about half an inch in diameter. It was, therefore, a tunnel within a tunnel, a silk within a sand one. The silk supported the sides so completely that not a particle of soil could pass through. The upper part of the tube projected from the earth, falling forward so as to form a flap which protected the mouth of the burrow or cave. At first the tube had been much longer and was bent and carried over the surface among the moss. This was the door which Spite had been looking for, and whose discovery so much pleased him. "Well, well," said Spite, talking all the while to himself, "this is lucky indeed. It must now be several moons since cousin Atypus was cut off by the Brownies, and here is her old place just as good as ever. It looks right into the meeting house. How fortunate! But I must fix up this door a little, or I shall have those suspicious fellows smelling around here; although I doubt whether they know anything about the place. They caught Atypus when she had ventured out of doors." [Illustration: FIG. 14.--English Atypus in Her Burrow.] Meanwhile Spite was busy with the door. He laid a dry leaf and a few bits of dry moss around the edge of the pebble, then gently lifted the silken flap and crept within. He made a wee hole in the flap, and through this saw and heard the proceedings of the Brownies. Little did the good folk suspect that one of their enemies was so near, almost in their midst. As for Spite, he was in high glee, although he was not without fears. The boy Brownies had climbed atop the Black Pebble, and crowded and capered upon it until they were like to shake it from the bank, and send it arolling into the Assembly. "Serve 'em right, the little plagues," snarled Spite, "if the old rock did get loose, and break all their necks in the avalanche. Only, that would make a gap in my burrow, and--well, it isn't pleasant to think of the consequences." Moreover, MacWhirlie and the restless youngsters who were mounted on the herbage that grew above and around the Pixie's cave, were continually tramping over the moss around the door, rocking to and fro on the overhanging heather sprays till the roots fairly shook, and scrambling up and down the little slope and over the flap itself. No wonder that Spite's heart seemed to jump into his throat occasionally.