She turned noiselessly back into the kitchen, put a box of matches in her pocket, felt her way to the low shelf on which she had placed the battered lantern, picked it up and shook it to make sure the oil was sufficient.
She stepped lightly into the yard, pushed open the gate of the split- board garden fence, walked along the edge to the corner and selected a spade from the tools that leaned against the boards.
Carrying the spade and unlighted lantern in her left hand, she glided from the yard into the woods.Her right hand before her to feel for underbrush or overhanging bough, she made her way rapidly to the swift- flowing mountain brook.
Arrived at the water whose musical ripple had guided her steps, she removed her shoes and placed them beside a tree.She wore no stockings.The faded skirt she raised and tucked into her belt.She could wade knee deep now without hindrance.
Seizing the spade and lantern, she made her way slowly and carefully downstream for three hundred yards and paused beside a shelving ledge which projected half-way across the brook.
She paused and listened again for full ten minutes, immovable as the rock on which her thin, bony hand rested.The stars were looking, but they could only peep through the network of overhanging trees.
Feeling her way along the rock until the ledge rose beyond her reach, she bent low and waded through a still pool of eddying water straight under the mountain-side for more than a hundred feet.Her extended right hand had felt for the stone ceiling above her head until it ran abruptly out of reach.
She straightened her body and took a deep breath.Ten steps she counted carefully and placed her bare feet on the dry rock beyond the water.
Carefully picking her way up the sloping bank until she reached a stretch of soft earth, she sank to her hands and knees and crawled through an opening less than three feet in height.
"Thar now!" she laughed."Let 'em find me if they can!"She lighted her lantern and seated herself on a boulder to rest--one hundred and fifty feet in the depths of a mountain.The cavern was ten feet in height and fifty feet in length.The projecting ledges of rock made innumerable shelves on which a merchant might have displayed his wares.
The old woman was too shrewd for that.Her jugs were carefully planted in the ground behind two fallen boulders, and their hiding-place concealed by a layer of drift which she had gathered from the edge of the water.She had taken this precaution against the day when some curious explorer might stumble on her secret as she had found it hunting ginsing roots in the woods overhead.Her foot had slipped suddenly through a hole in the soft mould.She peered cautiously below and could see no bottom.She dropped a stone and heard it strike in the depths.She made her way down the side of the crag and found the opening through the still eddying waters.The hole through the roof she had long ago plugged and covered with earth and dry leaves.
She carried her lantern and spade to the further end of her storehouse and dug a hole in the earth about two feet in depth.The earth she carefully placed in a heap.
"That's the place!" she giggled excitedly.
She left her lantern burning, dropped again on the soft, mould-covered earth and quickly emerged on the stone banks of the wide, still pool.Her hand high extended above her head, she waded through the water until she touched the heavy ceiling, lowered her body again to a stooping position and rapidly made her way out into the bed of the brook.
She passed eagerly along the babbling path and stopped with sure instinct at the tree beside whose trunk she had placed her shoes.
In five minutes she had made her way through the woods and reached the house.She tipped into the kitchen and stood in the doorway or the living-room watching her sleeping guest.The even breathing assured her that all was well.Her plan couldn't fail.She listened again for the sobs in the shed- room.
She was sure once that she heard them.Five minutes passed and stillshe was uncertain.To avoid any possible accident she tipped back through the kitchen, circled the house and placed her ear against the crack in the logs.
The girl was sobbing--or was she praying? She crouched beside the wall, waited and listened.The night wind stirred the dead leaves at her feet.She lifted her head with a sudden start, laughed softly and bent again to listen.
