He darted forward, and caught the boy's arm just as he was about to step
into this hole without seeing it, and pulled him back.

"Look out, Jesse W., or you'll go in!" he cried. "You don't know how deep
that place is nor where it will land you."

"H'm! I never noticed it. It does seem deep, doesn't it? I wonder how far
down it goes, and what's at the end? Water, do you suppose?"

"I don't know, I'm sure," said Jack, "but you might have had a bad fall,
my boy. You don't want to go star-gazing like that in strange places. You
never know what may be in the way. Always look where you are going."

"Yes, that's good advice, but I wonder if there is anything down there
anyhow? Do you suppose we could get down?"

"Possibly," returned Jack thoughtfully, "but I imagine it is a pretty good
job to get down there and a bigger one to get back, and nothing down there
anyhow."

"You can't tell without going down," said the younger boy wisely, as he
knelt on the edge of the hole, and looked down. "Have you got a pocket
light with you? We might tell something with that."

Jack parted the tall grass, and just then the sun shone out brightly, as
the breeze blew aside the branches, and a broad track of sunlight was let
into the hole.

"It does not go straight down," said Dick, who was now at Jack's side. "In
fact, I don't think it is as steep as the path we came up. We might go