Part 7

The three girls slipped through the gate and pattered timidly into the darkness. A continuous dropping from the roof wet their shoulders as if they had been caught in a shower, and their bare feet were soon covered with mud in spite of the board walk. It was very cold. For a time the light from the mouth of the cave served to show them the rocky walls. Then they turned a corner and felt rather than saw that they had entered a vast room, for they were staring into a darkness thicker than that of night. It was warmer here, and the ground was firm and dry under their feet, but somewhere there was a dropping of water with never a splash. Except for the sound, a terrible silence seemed to close in on them.

At last Suzanne could bear it no longer.

‘Hello!’ she cried nervously.

And instantly from all sides came a chorus of voices: ‘Hello! hello! hello!’

‘Oh, don’t!’ gasped Masha.

And ‘Don’t! don’t! don’t!’ cried the walls.

‘Oh, let’s get out,’ whispered Suzanne.

And from the darkness came the startled whisper: ‘Get out! Get out!’

Caught in a nameless terror, the girls fled down the dark passage, panting for the sunlight, which they could see glimmering in the distance through the bars. As they ran their courage mounted until they threw themselves breathless and laughing against the gate. It held fast! They jerked. It was locked! Panic-stricken, they gazed at one another. Then they began to shake the gate and to scream frantically for help. There was no answer. The gate had been built to keep people out of the dangerous cave. It reached to the roof, and someone had locked it while the girls had been exploring.

‘Let’s go back to the end of the passage, where it is dry,’ said Treska sensibly. ‘There may be a party of people in the cave now, and if there is they must come out this way. Or others will come this afternoon.’

Treska tried hard to believe what she said, but how could she tell whether anyone would come that day or indeed for many days?

‘Of course those were only echoes back there, weren’t they?’ asked Masha fearfully.

‘Of course,’ said Treska.

At the end of the passage all huddled together to keep warm. In one direction they could look toward the patch of light; in the other, into the fathomless blackness of the cave. As their eyes grew used to the darkness, they could dimly make out the walls nearest them, all of white rock, clean and dry as if freshly cut.

Suddenly a sound deep in the cave caught their attention, and then a faint glow appeared, like a little cloud at a great distance. As it rapidly increased, the girls realized that a procession of people carrying lighted tapers was approaching. They came slowly along a ledge of rock so high above the girls that it seemed like an upper floor of the cave. The flickering candles lighted up glistening walls, sparkling pendants of rock and strange forms, which struggled out of the shadow; but the height of the cave was so vast that the top still hung in darkness. Was the whole mountain hollow, then, like a melon? The procession wound slowly down a slippery staircase of wood, the guide leading the way with a big torch.

Even Masha knew that it was a party of everyday people, wrapped in warm coats and furs, who had been visiting the far interior of the cave. As they came forward, holding their lighted tapers high, more and more of the wonders of the cave were revealed; gleaming columns, low-hanging arches and lofty vaulting grew out of the darkness like parts of a fairy palace.

Clinging together at the entrance, the three little girls gazed breathlessly at their undreamed-of surroundings, and Masha, spellbound, saw what looked like a little frozen brook. It flowed down the wall spreading out in beautiful seaweed forms along its edges as if carved in white stone, and from the tip of each leaf hung a drop as white as a pearl--hung and then, with a tiny sigh, fell into the shadows below.

‘The lost brook!’ gasped Masha. ‘There it is!’

In her excitement, she had forgotten the strange people, but her voice startled them, and the guide turned quickly, throwing the light of his torch full upon the girls. Shy as wood birds, they stood dumb, and took the scolding of the astonished guide without trying to explain. Nothing mattered now. They would be out in the sunlight in a few minutes, and they were thrilled at the revelation of the vast and beautiful room, on the threshold of which they had sat unknowingly but a little while before.

But as the people moved on, the children hurried with them, forgetting the frozen brook and their own dark hour in their haste to get back to their world in the sun.

They shot into the light and scampered like rabbits through the woods. The crickets were chirping in the grass and the birds in the forest, and the fir trees smelt like incense in the warm sunshine.

‘Why, we are sitting on top of the cave now,’ cried Masha, as they sat down to their lunch.

‘Oh! the poor little brook!’ she sighed. ‘I wish we could let it out.’

That evening Treska’s father made a fire on the earthen floor of the hut, and Janko brought water to fill the black pot, which hung above it. Masha and Treska peeled potatoes and spread mushrooms to toast on the hot stones. From the rafters hung bunches of red peppers and golden corn, and right over the fire, tied in a white cloth, was a big cheese in process of being smoked.

‘You mean to say that you have been inside the cave?’ cried Janko, enviously, when the girls had told him of their adventure. ‘Why, it costs fifteen crowns to enter, and I have never seen it!’

Masha told him of the lost brook, and of how they had found it again inside the cave.

‘We heard the dropping of its tears long before we saw it,’ she said. ‘I suppose it went down to explore, just as we did, and couldn’t get out.’

‘Oh, no, it didn’t,’ answered Janko stolidly. ‘It was just running across the field trying to get down to the big stream in the valley when it came to the hole and fell in. But,’ he added kindly, seeing Masha’s face fall, ‘if you feel so badly about it, we’ll go up there to-morrow and turn the course of the brook.’

Masha sprang to her feet.

‘Why, what a splendid idea, Janko!’ she cried. ‘How did you ever think of it?’

Janko glowed. ‘That’s what we’ll do,’ he said, grandly, ‘I’ll drive the sheep up there to pasture, and we’ll build a dam and make the brook run down hill on the outside instead of on the inside.’

And then, because the hut was so small, they all rushed outside, and joining hands, danced wildly in the starlight while the potatoes bobbed in the pot and the sheep bleated drowsily from the fold and the shadows of the forest crowded closer and closer around them.

_Note_: Masha and Treska were Czecho-Slovak girls. Masha lived in Southern Moraira, Treska in the Carpathians of northern Slovakia.

MICHAEL MAKES UP HIS MIND

Across the darkening furrows a boy leading a farm horse plodded home through the twilight. His shoes were heavy with mud, and his thumbs were so cold that he blew on them to warm them; for though it was April there was snow in the air.

Far down on the horizon a tiny light shot out into the dusk. Michael said to himself that Helen was getting supper and had just lighted the candle.

When he had stabled the horse in the lean-to, he opened the door of the shack. A breath of warmth and three young voices rushed out to greet him. ‘Hello, Michael!’ ‘Come to supper!’ ‘We’re waiting.’

Michael entered, tracking in much mud, which didn’t really matter, for the floor was of beaten earth. He spread his hands to the fire. ‘What have you there?’ he asked, man-like.

‘Potatoes,’ said Helen, and lifted the lid to show the silky skins bursting like milkweed pods about to loose their fleece.

‘But we mustn’t eat the potatoes,’ cried Michael sharply; ‘we’ve got to save them for seed.’

‘What shall we eat, then?’ asked Helen.

‘Isn’t there any flour?’

Helen poked the meal-bag, which hung from the rafters to keep it from the rats. It was nearly empty.

Michael’s kind eyes were sombre as the family gathered at the table. ‘Is there anything we can sell?’ he asked.

‘Nothing but the goose,’ said Helen.

They looked at one another with troubled faces. If they sold the goose, what about the goslings that they hoped for in the spring?

‘I’ll go over to see the Friends after supper,’ said Michael. ‘Perhaps Mr. Hall will buy the goose.’ The four children had been in so many tight places that they were not easily discouraged. Basil and Katherine were soon frolicking merrily, but Michael and Helen took counsel together like old people.

There was little in the room that Michael had not made with his own hands--the rough table, the two benches, even the stove of stones and plaster, and the beds, which were boxes built against the wall and filled with straw. There was one bed in the kitchen for Helen and Katherine, and another for Michael and Basil in the recess, which had once been a cow stall; for the cabin was a part of what had been their father’s barn before the war.

When supper was over, the candle-stump was transferred to the lantern. Michael, cutting across lots, would need a light, for the fields were full of ditches and shell-holes.

The farm lay in the eastern part of Poland, near the Russian border. During the war it had been a battlefield, and when, after a year’s wandering, the children, orphaned, had struggled back to it, they had found everything except one corner of the barn swept away. Michael had made it weatherproof with timbers and stones pulled from the rubbish, and the neighbors, though shattered and poor themselves, had helped him. The land was good. Michael knew that in time he could make a living from it. But he was only fourteen, and in the meantime there were so many of them to be fed! The Friends had lent him a horse and cart the first season, and the community had given him seed. From the sale of his harvest and by working as house boy for Mr. Hall, Michael had been able to buy the horse and was now the proud owner of Boro.

The Society of Friends were a group of people who had come to Poland from America after the war to help those whose farms and homes had been destroyed. They ploughed and built, and they lent horses and tools and sold seed and supplies at a low figure. In fact, they were Friends in a very noble sense.

Michael entered the warm room where Mr. Hall sat writing in the lamplight. ‘Hello, Michael,’ he said. ‘How is business?’

‘Not so good,’ answered the boy soberly. ‘You want to buy a goose, Mr. Hall?’

‘No, I don’t believe I do, Michael. I should like to sell some goose eggs, instead.’ Then, seeing Michael’s blank face, he added, ‘Sit down and tell me why you wish to sell your goose.’

Mrs. Hall brought in a bowl of apples, and while Michael ate one he told about the seed potatoes and the empty meal sack.

‘It would be very foolish to sell your goose, though,’ said Mr. Hall. ‘If you set her on a dozen eggs they will be worth ten times as much as she is worth, by Christmas.’

‘I know,’ said Michael, heavy with misery. ‘I could get along, myself, but there are the children.’

‘You have your horse, haven’t you?’

‘Oh, yes, old Boro. He’s good and strong. I have been ploughing with him all day.’

‘How long shall you need him?’

‘To-morrow I shall finish all the land I can plant this year.’

‘Well, I’d like to hire Boro when you don’t need him. I can use more horses. Will you take a sack of meal and some goose eggs as part payment?’

Michael went home across the cold fields with a light heart, and the next day the spring work seemed to begin in earnest. Helen made pancakes for breakfast, Michael finished ploughing and began to sow, and Katherine and Basil filled a box with hay, as a nest for the goose.

Only a few days later Mr. Hall came to Michael with grave news. ‘My boy,’ he said, ‘I am going to leave here at the end of this month, and I want you to come with me.’

‘Going away!’ cried Michael, stupefied.

‘Yes, we are opening a Farm School at Kolpin. It is for orphaned boys, like yourself, who have land, but who are too young to work it. By the time they are eighteen or nineteen and are ready to go back they will know how to make the most of what they have. I wish you would come with us.’

Michael grew red with excitement.

‘I’d like to go all right,’ he said, ‘but of course I couldn’t leave the farm and the children.’

‘Michael, you are very brave, and you did fairly well last year, yet you made hardly enough to carry you through the winter.’

‘I have planted more this year,’ said the boy confidently.

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Hall, ‘and each year you will plant a little more until you are working all your land. But if you knew something about modern farming you could make it yield at least four times as much as it does.’

‘How could I?’

‘You would know what to plant in a field one year in order to get good corn the next; which soil is good for wheat and which for potatoes; and how to make old land young.’

‘I’d like it mighty well,’ sighed Michael, ‘but I must stick to the farm and the children. Mother wanted us to stay together.’

‘I would not ask you to come if we could not take the children, too.’

‘But,’ cried Michael in alarm, ‘you said it was a place for orphans; I promised mother I would never let the children go to an asylum.’

‘It is a school, not an orphanage,’ said Mr. Hall. ‘The children would be happy there.’

‘Not if it’s an orphan place,’ said Michael, and shook his head stubbornly.

Mr. Hall could not move him, and at the end of the month went away sadly, leaving Michael behind.

The boy took up his work with a lonely heart, but he did not lose courage. He loved every inch of his farm; the windy furrows against the sky, with the long-tailed magpies stalking over them; the clump of white birches in the hollow; the purple woodland and the gray windmill where he would carry his grain in the autumn to have it ground into flour. Even the little hump of a cottage, which he had built with his own hands, had grown dear to him; but most of all he loved his sisters and his small brother, and he had the joy of keeping the family together, as his mother had begged him to do.

One day in early summer, when the crops were pushing up bravely and the girls were weeding the turnip patch, Mr. Hall again stood before them. He had come over from Kolpin for things that had been left behind, and was to return that afternoon.

‘Can you give me some dinner?’ he called to Helen, and she ran to put the kettle on. When Michael came home, at noon, his heart gave a bound of joy. Not only was he glad to see Mr. Hall, but he was proud to show him his summer fields.

‘Yes, Michael,’ said Mr. Hall, ‘you have the making of a great farmer, but you must remember that land in Poland is no longer farmed as it was before the war. You will have to compete with modern methods. Now that we are well started at Kolpin, you must bring the children and make us a visit. I wish you would come to stay, Michael. Think it over!’ But Michael could not make up his mind.

‘If it were not an orphan place----’ he began.

‘Michael,’ said Mr. Hall seriously, ‘your mother would wish you and the others to go to school. She would want the girls to learn to cook and sew and keep house as she did. Do you think it is right for you to keep them from it? Come back with me to-day, all of you, and at the end of a week let the younger ones decide whether they will stay or not. That is only fair. Try it!’

Michael, who was beginning to see that perhaps he had no right to decide the question alone, put it to vote.

‘Let’s try it for a week,’ said Helen; and Katherine and Basil went wild with excitement.

After dinner they all climbed into the farm wagon, which was half filled with hay, and rolled away merrily behind the spanking grays. Toward evening they came to a white house at the end of an avenue of big trees, where people with kind eyes and kind voices were waiting for them; but the first thing that they saw as they drove in was a stork’s nest on the roof of the barn. Three angular little storks settled down for the night beneath their mother, while the father stork stood beside them, dark against the melting gold of sunset.

‘A stork’s nest,’ cried Katherine; ‘this will be a lucky place!’

‘That is not the only nest here,’ said the House Mother, ‘come and see the others.’

The first nest was a long, brown house full of big boys who were just sitting down to a supper of rice with peas, black bread, cocoa, and apples. Here Michael was to live.

The second nest was a square little house like something in a story book. Here Helen and Katherine were to live, with Basil. The floors were as smooth as silk. At the windows hung daffodil curtains, which made the rooms seem full of sunshine. There were little white beds, one for each child, with sheets such as these children had had when their mother was alive; and in the kitchen was a great stove, with a chimney-hood like the one in their old home.

Every one at the farm school was busy. Michael went out to the fields or to the barns with the other boys. Helen made beds and washed dishes. Katherine shelled peas. All passed a part of each day in the schoolroom. Even Basil learned to count the geese that were placed in his care. He knew that there were eight in all, so if there were only five in the path there must be three behind the hedge.

That week Michael watched the children closely. He knew that they were having better food than he could give them, and when he saw them starting gayly for the blackberry patch with their tin pails, or saw Helen in a clean pink apron watering the foxgloves and hollyhocks with a happy smile, he nodded wisely. In his own heart he longed to stay, for he had seen enough of the well-tilled acres on the river Bug to know that here he could learn to be a successful farmer.

‘What shall I do with my farm if we stay?’ he asked Mr. Hall.

‘You may take a week in the spring to plant grain and another in the fall to harvest it. We can use Boro here.’

At the end of the week Mr. Hall called the family together. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘which is it to be, go or stay?’

‘Stay!’ they shouted joyously.

Michael added, ‘If mother could see us all here I know she would be glad.’

‘Every one is glad,’ said Mr. Hall. ‘Look!’ and he pointed toward the barn, where, on the roof-tree they saw the old stork rise on his toes and clap his beak and his wings with great content.

ELENA’S CIAMBELLA

As Elena scampered over the road, the town clock struck a quarter to four. Elena had an important engagement. Her mother had sent her to draw a jar of water from the public well outside the town; and on the way back she was to stop at the bakery to get her _ciambella_, which was to come out of the oven at four.

Now a _ciambella_ is an Easter cake, but it is different from any other cake in the world. It is made of flour and sugar and olive oil, and tastes like a crisp cooky. If you are a girl yours will be in the form of a dove; if a boy, in the form of a galloping horse, with a handle of twisted dough from mane to tail to carry it by. Whichever it may be, an Easter egg will be baked inside the _ciambella_, and the cake will be stuck full of downy feathers, which wave and look festive.

Elena’s cake was an unusually large one, in the shape of a dove, of course, with wings and tail feathers and an open beak. It had been brought to the bakery on a tray by Elena’s mother, and left to be baked.

As Elena panted up the hill she saw Giuseppa outside the _cabane_ or hut, helping her mother with the washing. The baby stood in a high, narrow box where he could look on and yet was out of mischief, and there he waved his arms and shouted with excitement as the suds flew.

‘Where are you going?’ called Giuseppa as Elena passed.

‘To get my _ciambella_,’ cried Elena. ‘Have you got yours?’

Giuseppa shook her head. ‘I’m not going to have any,’ she said.

‘Not this year,’ added her mother, looking up; ‘perhaps next. But we are going to make the _cabane_ clean for Easter.’

Giuseppa and Elena looked at each other sympathetically.

‘Too bad!’ exclaimed Elena. ‘Well I must hurry. _Ciao_, Giuseppa.’

‘_Ciao_, Elena.’ (A parting that is pronounced ‘chow’ and means good-bye.)

When Elena reached the bakery she found a great crowd there. The four o’clock cakes were coming out of the oven. Far back in the glow Elena could see her own _ciambella_ on the stone floor of the oven, larger than all the rest, its feathers waving tantalizingly in the heat.

In the midst of the women and children stood the cook, with smooth black hair and huge earrings of gold and pearls, which reached to her shoulders, and with a clean flowered kerchief tucked into her corset. She was bare-armed and brown, and held what looked like a great pancake-turner with a very long handle. With this she could reach into the depths of the oven, which was as big as a pantry, and scoop out the cakes, even those quite at the back. There were all sorts of cakes, large and small; some were cookies, and some were big loaves made with almonds and honey and eggs. The whole place smelt delicious, and every one stood on tiptoe to see his own cake pulled out of the oven. Finally Elena’s _ciambella_ was put into her hands, still hot and fragrant, though she had waited for it to cool somewhat on a tray.

Just then a little girl named Letitia came in to ask for coals with which to light the fire at home. The cook raked a few from the oven and put them into the pot of ashes that Letitia carried. Covering them with her apron, Letitia went out with Elena.

‘Just look at my _ciambella_,’ said Elena proudly, as she carried it carefully on both hands. ‘Isn’t it a beauty?’

‘Yes,’ said Letitia, ‘I am going to have one, too. It will be baked to-morrow. Of course,’ she added, ‘it won’t be quite as big as yours, because Maria will have one and Gino will have a horse. But they’ll all taste the same.’

‘Just think!’ said Elena, ‘Giuseppa isn’t going to have any at all.’

‘Not any?’ cried Letitia. ‘How dreadful! I never heard of a house without a _ciambella_! They must be very poor.’

‘Yes, but at school Giuseppa always has a clean apron and clean hands. She helps her mother a lot, too. Well, chow, Letitia.’

‘Chow, Elena.’

The girls parted, and Elena walked proudly through the streets, carrying the cake as though in a procession.

She climbed the outside stair, which led to her house, built over the donkey stable. Her mother had gone out to the fountain to polish her pots. The big dim room, with its brown rafters and the dark furniture ranged along the walls, was very quiet. A patch of sunshine made a bright spot on the stone floor, and in it a white pigeon drowsed. It did not move, even when Elena stepped over it. The little girl looked down and laughed at the comical resemblance between the pigeon and her _ciambella_; but her own pigeon sat up very straight and stiff, because it had an Easter egg baked inside it.

Elena set the cake carefully on a big chest while she struggled to open the bottom drawer of the bureau. There she laid the cake in a nest of clean aprons and handkerchiefs, to rest until Saturday afternoon, when it would be taken out to be blessed. Not until Sunday morning would its fine feathers be plucked and its crisp wings bitten off.

The _ciambella_ safely lodged in the drawer, Elena climbed on a chair and got a piece of bread and some sheep’s cheese from the cupboard; then she ran to find her mother.