of us."

"No," replied Edmund, sorrowfully shaking his head, "it wasn't necessary.
The noise would have sufficed; and I ought to have known it."

"Why didn't you shout, then? That scared the first one," put in Henry,
whose soul, it must be said, was not overflowing with sympathy.

"I did what I thought was best at the moment," Edmund replied, with a
broken voice. "They were so many and so threatening that I imagined my
voice alone might not be effective. But I'm sorry, sorry!"

"Henry, you're a fool!" cried the sympathetic Jack. "Come now, Edmund,"
he continued, kindly laying a hand on his shoulder, "what you did was the
only thing under heaven that could have been done. You're wrong to blame
yourself. By Jo, if you hadn't done it I would!"

But Edmund only shook his head, as if refusing to be comforted. It was
the first sign of weakness that we had seen in our incomparable leader,
but I am sure it only increased our respect for him--at least that's true
of Jack and me. After that I noticed that Edmund was far more gentle than
before in his relations with the people of the caverns.

Not long after this painful incident we made a discovery of extreme
interest. It was nothing less than a big smithy! Edmund had foretold that
we should find something of the kind.

"Those braziers and cooking pots," he had said, "and the tools that must
have been needed to build the steps and to dig their graves, prove that
they know how to work in iron. If it is not done in these caverns, then