Page:The Whisper on the Stair by Lyon Mearson (1924).djvu/300

 thing without himself being seen. Back of the store stood the high-powered car that he had picked up, somewhere.

At the suggestion of Jessica, the party stopped at a hardware dealer’s to get a new battery for Val’s flashlight. He would need it in the cave, which, while not very deep, was low and dark.

In a few minutes they had left Hampton behind and were in the open country. Val and Jessica, like two children, chattered all the way in their excitement. Jessica was now her light-hearted self, with the glow of happiness in her eyes, the lithe swing of youth in her walk; the fresh air whipped the roses into her cheeks as they went along, her hand in the crook of Val’s arm. Val did his best to keep his feet on the ground, but it was tough work. He felt that, given just a little more, he would tear his moorings asunder and float high over the world, like a great balloon that spurned such common things as good red Virginia soil.

They gave the little cottage where Jessica had been living a wide berth and approached Mount Monroe by a road Val had not yet trodden. He could see the hill from where they were, a knobby, brush and vegetation-covered eminence rising to a height of perhaps two hundred feet.

The road they walked was very narrow, so that they had to go along in single file. On each side the underbrush hemmed them in completely. Beyond the brush was the forest, one of the few forests left in that part of the country. Once Val thought he heard something moving in the bushes opposite them.

He leaped for the bushes and tore them aside, but could find nothing.