"With the pa.s.sage blocked at this end, and the door locked, how are we going to get out of here?"

"Break the door down," suggested Sahwah.

"Easier said than done," replied the Captain. "What are we going to break it down with? You can't knock down a door like that with your bare hands."

Nevertheless they tried it, pounding frantically with their fists, and kicking the solid panel furiously.

"No use, we can't break it down," said Slim crossly, nursing his aching hand. "My knuckles are smashed and my toes are smashed, but there's never a dent in the door. You'd think the old thing would be rotten down here in this hole, but it's so covered with paint that it's waterproof. It isn't wet enough to rot it," he finished unhappily, scowling at the piles of dust at his feet.

"We'll have to call until somebody hears us and comes down," said Sahwah.

"n.o.body'll ever hear us down here," said Justice. "We're on the lonesome side of the hill, remember!"

Nevertheless they did shout at the tops of their lungs, and called again and again until their ears ached with the racket their voices made in the closed-in little place, and their throats ached with the strain.

"_n.o.body can hear us!_"

The disheartening realization came to them all at last.

"Do you suppose we'll have to stay down here until we starve to death?"

asked Sahwah in an awe-stricken voice, after a terrified hush had reigned for several minutes.

"We'll freeze to death before we starve," said Justice pessimistically, shivering until his teeth chattered.

"Nonsense!" said Katherine severely. "We'll get out somehow. Sherry and Nyoda will find the stair landing open and will come after us," she finished, and the rest shouted aloud, so great was their relief at the thought.

Then Justice struck them cold again with his next words. "No, they won't find it open, because I closed it several times, but I left it closed.

They'll never find that spring in a million years."

A groan of disappointment went up at his words and their hearts sank like lead.

"We'll get out somehow," repeated Katherine determinedly, after a minute.

"We were shut up in a cave once before, and we got out all right."

"Yes, but that time Slim and I were on the outside, not on the inside _with_ you," the Captain reminded her.

"Yes, and that time it wasn't so cold," said Sahwah, vainly trying to stop shivering, "and we had eaten so many strawberries that we could have lasted for days. I'm hungry already."

"So'm I," said Slim decidedly. "I've been hungry for an hour."

"You're always hungry," said Justice impatiently. "I guess you'll last as long as the rest of us, though."

"Stop talking about 'lasting,'" said Katherine with a shudder of something besides cold. "You give me the creeps."

"If we only had something to break the door down with!" sighed Justice.

"It would take a battering ram, though," he finished hopelessly.

"Too bad Hercules' old goat isn't down here with us," said Sahwah with a sudden reminiscent giggle. "He could have smashed the door down in no time with his forehead."

"But he _isn't_ here, and we are," remarked Slim gloomily.

"I wish now I'd waked Sylvia up and shown her the stair landing opening,"

sighed Katherine regretfully. "She was so sound asleep, though, I couldn't bear to waken her. If she only knew about it she could send Sherry after us!" Oh, the tragedy bound up in that little word "if"!

Then to add to their troubles the lantern began to burn out with a series of pale flashes, and Slim was so agitated about it that he dropped the biggest electric flashlight on the floor and put it out of commission.

Katherine's small pocket flash had burned out some time before. That left only two small flashlights.

"Put them out," directed Justice, "so they'll last. We can flash them when we need a light."

It was much worse, being there in the darkness. Sahwah and Katherine clung to each other convulsively and the boys instinctively moved nearer together. Conversation dropped off after a while and it seemed as if the silence of the tomb hovered over them. No sound came from any direction.

During another one of these silences, following a desperate outburst of shouting, a sound burst through the uncanny stillness. It was a slight sound, but to their strained nerves it was as startling as a cannon shot.

It was merely a faint pat, pat, pat, coming from somewhere. They could not tell the direction, it was so far off.

"It's footsteps!" said Sahwah, starting up wildly.

"No, it's only water dropping," said Justice, cupping his hand over his ear in an attempt to locate the direction of the sound. "I wonder where it can be."

He flashed the light and looked for the dropping water, but failed to find it. He turned the light out again. Then in the darkness the sound seemed clearer than before-pat, pat, pat, pat.

"It's getting louder," said Katherine.

"It _is_ footsteps!" cried Sahwah positively. "They're coming nearer!

Listen!"

The tapping noise increased until it became without a doubt the sound of a footfall drawing nearer along the pa.s.sage on the other side of the cave.

"It's Sherry looking for us; he's found the pa.s.sage!" shrieked Sahwah, "or maybe it's Hercules!"

"Yell, everybody!" commanded Justice, "and let him know where we are."

They set up a perfectly ear-splitting shout, and as the echoes died away they heard the snap of the lock on the other side of the door. Slim, who was nearest, flung himself upon the door handle and in another instant the door yielded under his hand and swung inward.

"Sherry!" they shouted, and crowded out into the pa.s.sage, all talking at once.

"Sherry! Sherry! Where are you?" Sahwah called, suddenly aware that no one had answered them. Justice and the Captain sprang their flashlights and looked about them in astonishment. There was no one in the pa.s.sage beside themselves.

Who had unfastened the latch and let them out?

Sahwah and Katherine suddenly gripped each other in terror, while the cold chills ran down their spines. The same thought of a supernatural agency had come into the mind of each. Then they both laughed at the absurdity of it.

"It couldn't have been a ghost," declared Katherine flatly. "Ghosts don't make any noise when they walk."

As fast as they could they ran back through the pa.s.sage to the door in the cellar wall, jerked the cable that opened the trap, and came out through the landing just as Nyoda, arriving home, was taking off her furs at the foot of the stairs. They never forgot her petrified expression when she saw them coming up through the floor.

"We thought it must be nearly midnight!" said Sahwah in amazement, when they found out that they had never even been missed. They had only been gone from the house for two hours.

Sherry came in presently and was as dumbfounded as Nyoda when he saw the opening in the landing and heard the tale of the Winnebagos and the boys.