Other boys played truant too, of course--and these went nutting or blackberrying or wild plum gathering, but Edmund never went on the side of the town where the green woods and hedges grew. He always went up the mountain where the great rocks were, and the tall, dark pine trees, and where other people were afraid to go because of the strange noises that came out of the caves. Edmund was not afraid of these noises--though they were very strange and terrible. He wanted to find out what made them. One day he did. He had invented, all by himself, a very ingenious and new kind of lantern, made with a turnip and a tumbler, and when he took the candle out of Granny's bedroom candlestick to put in it, it gave quite a splendid light. He had to go to school next day, and he was caned for being absent without leave--although he very straightforwardly explained that he had been too busy making the lantern to have time to come to school. But the day after he got up very early and took the lunch Granny had ready for him to take to school--two boiled eggs and an apple turnover--and he took his lantern and went off as straight as a dart to the mountains to explore the caves. The caves were very dark, but his lantern lighted them up beautifully; and they were most interesting caves, with stalactites and stalagmites and fossils, and all the things you read about in the instructive books for the young. But Edmund did not care for any of these things just then. He wanted to find out what made the noises that people were afraid of, and there was nothing in the caves to tell him. Presently he sat down in the biggest cave and listened very carefully, and it seemed to him that he could distinguish three different sorts of noises. There was a heavy rumbling sound, like a very large old gentleman asleep after dinner; and there was a smaller sort of rumble going on at the same time; and there was a sort of crowing, clucking sound, such as a chicken might make if it happened to be as big as a haystack. "It seems to me," said Edmund to himself, "that the clucking is nearer than the others." So he started up again and explored the caves once more. He found out nothing, but about halfway up the wall of the cave, he saw a hole. And, being a boy, he climbed up to it and crept in; and it was the entrance to a rocky passage. And now the clucking sounded more plainly than before, and he could hardly hear the rumbling at all. "I _am_ going to find out something at last," said Edmund, and on he went. The passage wound and twisted, and twisted and turned, and turned and wound, but Edmund kept on. "My lantern's burning better and better," said he presently, but the next minute he saw that all the light did not come from his lantern. It was a pale yellow light, and it shone down the passage far ahead of him through what looked like the chink of a door.