Allegories; Christian fiction; Clergy -- Fiction; Ozark Mountains -- Fiction
Dropping to his knees and to one hand the shepherd pushed aside the
screen of vines and branches with the other, and then on all fours
crawled into the narrow passage. The Doctor followed. They found their
guide crouching in a small opening in the wall of rock. Mr. Howitt
uttered an exclamation, “The lost cave! Old man Dewey!”
The boy laughed, “Pete knows. Come, Dad. Come, other man. Ain’t nothin’
can get you here.” He scrambled ahead of them into the low tunnel. Some
twenty feet from the entrance, the passage turned sharply to the left
and opened suddenly into a hallway along which the shepherd could
easily walk erect. Pete went briskly forward as one on very familiar
ground, his lantern lighting up the way clearly for his two companions.
For some distance their course dipped downward at a gentle angle, while
the ceilings and sides dripped with moisture. Soon they heard the sound
of running water, and entering a wider room saw sparkling in the
lantern’s light a stream that came from under the rocky wall, crossed
their path, and disappeared under the other wall of the chamber. “Lost
Creek!” ejaculated the shepherd, as he picked his way over the stream
on the big stones. And the boy answered, “Pete knows. Pete knows.”
From the bank of the creek the path climbed strongly upward, the
footing grew firmer, and the walls and ceiling drier; as they went on,
the passage, too, grew wider and higher, until they found themselves in
a large underground hallway that echoed loudly as they walked.
Overhead, pure white stalactites and frost-like formations glittered in
the light, and the walls were broken by dark nooks and shelf-like
ledges with here and there openings leading who could tell where?
At the farther end of this hallway where the ceiling was highest, the
guide paused at the foot of a ledge against which rested a rude ladder.
The shepherd spoke again, “Dewey Bald?” he asked. Pete nodded, and
began to climb the ladder.
Another room, and another ledge; then a long narrow passage, the
ceiling of which was so high that it was beyond the lantern light; then
a series of ledges, and they saw that they were climbing from shelf to
shelf on one side of an underground cañon. Following along the edge of
the chasm, the doctor pushed a stone over the brink, and they heard it
go bounding from ledge to ledge into the dark heart of the mountain.
“No bottom, Daniel. Blast it all, no bottom to it! What would Sarah and
the girls say?”
They climbed one more ladder and then turned from the cañon into
another great chamber, the largest they had entered. The floor was
perfectly dry; the air, too, was dry and pure; and, from what seemed to
be the opposite side of the huge cavern, a light gleamed like a red eye
in the darkness. They were evidently nearing the end of their journey.
Drawing closer they found that the light came from the window of a
small cabin built partly of rock and partly of logs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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