In a little time he felt for my hand and grasped it.

“I’m warm enough now, in all conscience,” he said; and with that we slipped into the stream.

’Twas a disappointment of the grateful sort to find the water no more than mid-thigh deep.  The current was swift and strong, but with the pebbly bottom to give good footing ’twas possible to stem it slowly.  Laying hold of each other for the better breasting of the flood we felt our way warily to the middle of the pool; felt for the low-sprung cavern arch, and for that scanty lifting of it where we hoped to find head room between stone above and stream below.

We found the highest part of the arch after some blind groping, and making lowly obeisance to the gods of the underworld began a snail-like progress into the gurgling throat of the spewing rock-monster.

I here confess to you, my dears, that, had I loved my sweet lady less, no earthly power could have driven me into that dismal stifling place.  All my life long I have had a most unspeakable horror of low-roofed caverns and squeezing passages that cramp a man for breath and for the room to draw it in; and when the suffocating madness came upon me, as it did when we were well jammed in this cursed horror-hole, I was right glad to have my love for Margery to make an outward-seeming man of me; glad, too, that my dear lad was close behind to shame me into going on.

Yet, after all, the passage through the throat of the rock dragon was vastly more terrifying than difficult.  Once well within the closely drawn upper lip we could brace our backs against the roof and so have a purchase for the foothold.  Better still, when we had passed a pike’s-length beyond the lip the breathing space above the water grew wider and higher till at length we could stand erect and come abreast to lock arms and push on side by side.

From that the stream broadened and grew shallower with every step, and presently we could hear it on ahead babbling over the stones like any peaceful woodland brook.  Then suddenly the dank and noisome air of the cavern gave place to the pine-scented breath of the forest; and, looking straight up, we could see the twinkling stars shining down upon us from a narrow breadth of sky.

XXVII

HOW A KING’S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL

Dick pressed closer to me, and I could feel him drinking in deep drafts of the grateful outer air.

“What new wonder is this?” he would ask, with something akin to awe in his voice; but we must needs grope this way and that to feel out the answer with our finger-tips.

When the answer was found, the mystery of the lost trail was solved most simply.  As we made out, we were in a deep crevice cut crosswise by the stream which, issuing from a yawning cavern in the farther wall, was quickly engulfed again by that lower archway we had just traversed.  In some upheaval of the earthquake age a huge slice of the mountain’s face had split off and settled away from the parent cliff to leave a deep cleft open to the sky.  One end of this crevice chasm—­that toward the upland valley—­was choked and filled by the debris of later landslides; but the lower end was open.