"Look out!" cried Tommy in a loud whisper, when he saw where he was
going.

"Why?" asked Clare.

"Because there's a horrible hole there, full of water," answered
Tommy.

"I'll keep a look out," returned Clare, and went.

When he was about half-way along the end of the house, he heard a
noise he did not understand, and stopped to listen. Some one seemed
moving somewhere.

Then came a kind of scrambling sound, and presently the noise of a
great watery splash. Clare shivered from head to foot.

"Something has fallen into the hole Tommy mentioned!" he said to
himself, and ran on to see. A few steps brought him to what Tommy had
taken for a great hole. It was nothing but a pool of rain-water: the
splash could not have come from that!

Then it occurred to him that the water-but could not be far off. He
forced his way through shrubs of various kinds, and reaching the wall,
went back along it until he came to the but. A ray of moonlight showed
him that the side of it was wet, as if the water had lately come over
the edge. He looked about for some means of getting a peep into the
huge thing. It stood on a brick stand, of which it left a narrow edge
clear, but on this edge the bulge of the but would not permit him to