“Maybe it is—a lost river. But wait till I get the candle and see your ankle.”
A slam! A door slam! They both started. “Gee whiz! The door’s slammed shut!” exclaimed Marty, dismay echoing in that water filled basin.
“Oh, Marty!” She was up at the door, candle in hand. She pushed! She pounded! It was locked, tight, with the catch on the other side!
“Oh-h-h!” Terror and panic seized her. What an awful thing had happened!
Poor Marty, with a sprained ankle! She must not frighten him into a panic. She turned back and crept down the skeleton stairs.
“Can’t I get to a window?” she asked breathlessly.
“That one, over the big hole, is the only one with glass in,” Marty managed to answer. “The others is all barred up.”
“It’s right over the whirlpool!” she faltered.
“You bet it is! I didn’t want to tell you, but I thought sure I was in China.”
Holding the candle high above her head Gloria glared at the forbidding hole they were trapped in.
It was terrible, awful! They were trapped, locked in a cellar with that awful ill smelling water all about them.
“Marty!” she gasped, sinking down beside him on the little landing. “Marty, what shall we do?”
“Pray,” answered Marty. “Maybe some ’un ’ill come!”
That was the boy’s way. To ask and to hope! She had only seen despair. But now she remembered. Trixy and Ben were to ride out to Aunt Hattie’s for her, and she, Trixy, knew they were coming to Echoes!
“If only I could get to that window,” she panted. “Maybe Trixy will come!”
The unmistakable honk-honk of a friendly car sounded like Gabriel’s trumpet—if paradise had been promised to all.
“Yes,” exclaimed Gloria, holding to Marty’s wet coat to keep from falling over the narrow platform. “That’s Trixy and Ben!”
“Yes. A friend from—my home town. Oh, if I can only make them hear!”
She pealed out the syllables with every bit of power she could command. But the horn honked uninterruptedly.
Then Marty tried it. He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled! “Trix-ee! Hey, there! Trix-ee Trav-verse! Whoo-hool!” His voice echoed with an uncanny resonance, but the horn of the car outside never listened.
Gloria dropped her arm from his shoulder. “They can’t hear us,” she murmured.
“No. The drive is blocked with big planks across, and they have to stop way down by the cedars.”