ural rockery out of which grew ferns and strange spiky plants.
"For goodness sake look out for snakes," said Trant to him. "This place swarms with them."
CHAPTER XXXII.
"THE ROCK OF THE HUMAN HEAD."
Elsie turned away from the married and forbidden lovers with a little shiver of disgust, and she and Trant, unnoticed by the other two, strolled presently out of the gorge. The turn of a rocky screen put them out of sight. They stood presently in front of the precipice, and apparently further progress seemed barred. "Well?" she said.
Trant pointed with a staff he had cut from a stout gum-sapling to a hole just above her head half covered with hoya creepers. It looked, only that it was too large, like the hole of a wallaby or native bear. He swung himself up to it. "I could take you another way," he said, "but this will save time." In a moment he had disappeared within the hole, which she now saw was even larger than it had seemed, and must have a drop within. The upper part of his body showed and his arm and the staff, which he stretched down.
"Do you think you could put your foot in that little cleft?" he said. "You will find it much easier than it looks; then take my hand and I will lift you here."
She did as he bade her. The girl liked mystery, and her face was flushed with interest. In a few moments she found herself walking on a higher level within the rampart of the rock in a kind of corridor, with the sky far overhead. "Oh, how extraordinary!" she cried.
He repeated his caution against snakes, and made her lift her habit and show him her boots and gaiters, which he declared stout enough almost to defy a serpent's fangs.
