So away she pursued her difficult quest, becoming constantly more
involved in the thick undergrowth and more scratched and dishevelled
every moment, till at length she stood at the top of the bluff. From
this point she could see in every direction, but not a vestige of Sally
or Genevieve appeared. More bewildered than ever, Doris clambered back
to the spot where she had last seen them. And, as there was plainly now
no other course, she stood where she was and called aloud:
"Sally! Sal--ly! I give it up. Where in the world are you?"
There was a low, chuckling laugh directly behind her, and, whirling
about, she beheld Sally's laughing face peeping out from an aperture in
the tangled growth that she was positive she had not noticed there
before.
"Come right in!" cried Sally. "And I won't keep it a secret any longer.
Did you guess it was anything like this?"
She pushed a portion of the undergrowth back a little farther and Doris
scrambled in through the opening. No sooner was she within than Sally
closed the opening with a swift motion and they were all suddenly
plunged into inky darkness.
"Wait a moment," she commanded, "and I'll make a light." Doris heard her
fumbling for something; then the scratch of a match and the flare of a
candle. With an indrawn breath of wonder, Doris looked about her.
"Why, it's a room!" she gasped. "A little room all made right in the
hillside. How did it ever come here? How did you ever find it?"
It was indeed the rude semblance of a room. About nine feet square and
seven high, its walls, floor and ceiling were finished in rough planking
of some kind of timber, now covered in the main with mold and fungus
growths. Across one end was a low wooden structure evidently meant for a
bed, with what had once been a hard straw mattress on it. There was
likewise a rudely constructed chair and a small table on which were the
rusted remains of a tin platter, knife and spoon. There was also a metal
candle-stick in which was the candle recently lit by Sally. It was a
strange, weird little scene in the dim candle-light, and for a time
Doris could make nothing of its riddle.
"What _is_ it? What does it all mean, Sally?" she exclaimed, gazing
about her with awestruck eyes.
"I don't know much more about it than you do," Sally averred. "But I've
done some guessing!" she ended significantly.
"But how did you ever come to discover it?" cried Doris, off on another
tack. "I could have searched Slipper Point for years and never have come
across _this_."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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