We were now come to the foot of the first waterfall, an obvious _cul de sac_ for a party which included two ladies and a sick man on a litter. I stood gazing up at the wet, slippery rocks by which I had made my ascent yesterday, and searching in vain for a more practicable path. Dr. Beauregard halted and turned upon me with a smile. "A moment," said he, "and you will grant that my privacy is rather neatly protected. But first"--he pointed to the water pouring past us from the pool beneath the fall--"you may remark that the stream here has more than twice the volume of the stream you see coming down the rocks." I looked. The difference was plain enough, and I had been a fool in failing to observe it. "The reason being," he went on, "that a second and larger stream flows into the pool under the very stones on which you are standing. I myself laid that channel for it, almost ten years ago, and Nature has very kindly helped to disguise it. Now, if you will follow me--" He drew aside a mat of creepers overhanging a bush to the left of the path, and, stooping, disappeared into a dim, green tunnel, so artfully contrived that even without its curtain of creepers it suggested no more than a chance gap in the undergrowth. The tunnel zigzagged twice at a sharp angle, and then, quite suddenly, the dimness changed to warm sunlight, and we emerged at his heels upon a prospect that well excused my gasp of astonishment. We stood at the lower end of a smooth, green glade, through which a broad stream--a river, almost--came swirling, its murmur drowned in the thunder of the waterfall behind us, which the bushes now concealed. The glade was, in fact, a valley-bottom, thinned of undergrowth and set with tall trees; and the stream such a stream as tumbles through many an English deer-park. The whole scene might have been transplanted from England but for a wall of naked cliff, sharply serrated, which enclosed the valley on the left. And under it, like a smooth military terrace at the foot of a fortress, the glade curved upward and out of sight. The scene, I have said, was almost typically English--but to the eye only. "Faugh!" exclaimed Miss Belcher, looking about her and sniffing suspiciously. "A pretty place enough, but full of malaria, or I'm a Dutchwoman! And what a horrible silence!" "Malaria?" said Mr. Rogers, quietly. "There's better scent than malaria in this valley, and we're hot on it. Here's the river, and-- What does the chart say, boy? Five trees, a mile and a half from the creek-head? We must have come a mile already. Keep your eyes skinned, and give me a nudge if you see such a clump." But there was no need to keep my eyes skinned. At the next bend of the glade he and I caught sight of it simultaneously--a clump of noble pines that would have challenged notice even had we not been searching for them. My heart stood still as I counted them. Yes; there were five!