high and bushy. The adventurers had long since ceased to blow
their horns. It was too tiring to go on doing that, when there was no
one to be annoyed by it.

"Oh, kriky!" observed Jimmy suddenly, "let's sit down a bit and
have some of our dinner. We might call it lunch, you know," he
added persuasively.

So they sat down in the hedge and ate the ripe red gooseberries
that were to have been their dessert.

And as they sat and rested and wished that their boots did not feel
so full of feet, Gerald leaned back against the bushes, and the
bushes gave way so that he almost fell over backward. Something
had yielded to the pressure of his back, and there was the sound of
something heavy that fell.

"Oh, Jimminy!" he remarked, recovering himself suddenly; "there's
something hollow in there the stone I was leaning against simply
went!"

"I wish it was a cave," said Jimmy; "but of course it isn't."

"If we blow the horns perhaps it will be," said Kathleen, and
hastily blew her own.

Gerald reached his hand through the bushes. "I can't feel anything
but air," he said; "it's just a hole full of emptiness. The other two
pulled back the bushes. There certainly was a hole in the bank.
"I'm going to go in," observed Gerald.