Mas' Thurnall he come dis mornin'; gone up picken' bush wid de ladies.

He! he! Not seen him dis tree year afore." "Thurnall!" Stangrave's heart sank within him.

His first impulse was to order a carriage, and return whence he came; but it would look so odd, and, moreover, be so foolish, that he made up his mind to stay and face the worst.

So he swallowed a hasty dinner, and then wandered up the narrow valley, with all his suspicions of Thurnall and Marie seething more fiercely than ever in his heart.
Some half-mile up, a path led out of the main road to a wooden bridge across the stream.

He followed it, careless whither he went; and in five minutes found himself in the quaintest little woodland cavern he ever had seen.
It was simply a great block of black lava, crowned with brushwood, and supported on walls and pillars of Dutch cheeses, or what should have been Dutch cheeses by all laws of shape and colour, had not his fingers proved to them that they were stone.