Winnie had tripped and fallen.

“Are you hurt, dear—­child?” asked Nigel, raising her gently.

“Oh no! only a little shaken,” answered Winnie, with a little laugh that was half hysterical.  “I am strong enough to go on presently.”

“Nay, my child, you must suffer yourself to be carried at this part,” said Van der Kemp.  “Take her up, Nigel, you are stronger than I am now.  I would not have asked you to do it before my accident!”

Our hero did not need a second bidding.  Grasping Winnie in his strong arms he raised her as if she had been a feather, and strode away at a pace so rapid that he soon left Van der Kemp and Moses far behind.

“Put me down, now,” said Winnie, after a little while, in a low voice.  “I’m quite recovered now and can walk.”

“Nay, Winnie, you are mistaken.  The path is very rough yet, and the dust gets deeper as we ascend. Do give me the pleasure of helping you a little longer.”

Whatever Winnie may have felt or thought she said nothing, and Nigel, taking silence for consent, bore her swiftly onward and upward,—­with an “Excelsior” spirit that would have thrown the Alpine youth with the banner and the strange device considerably into the shade,—­until he placed her at the yawning black mouth of the hermit’s cave.

But what a change was there!  The trees and flowering shrubs and ferns were all gone, lava, pumice, and ashes lay thick on everything around, and only a few blackened and twisted stumps of the larger trees remained to tell that an umbrageous forest had once flourished there.  The whole scene might be fittingly described in the two words—­grey desolation.

“That is the entrance to your father’s old home,” said Nigel, as he set his fair burden down and pointed to the entrance.

“What a dreadful place!” said Winnie, peering into the black depths of the cavern.

“It was not dreadful when I first saw it, Winnie, with rich verdure everywhere; and inside you will find it surprisingly comfortable.  But we must not enter until your father arrives to do the honours of the place himself.”

They had not to wait long.  First Moses arrived, and, shrewdly suspecting from the appearance of the young couple that they were engaged in conversation that would not brook interruption, or, perhaps, judging from what might be his own wishes in similar circumstances, he turned his back suddenly on them, and, stooping down, addressed himself to an imaginary creature of the animal kingdom.

“What a bootiful bufferfly you is, to be sure! up on sitch a place too, wid nuffin’ to eat ’cept Krakatoa dust.  I wonder what your moder would say if she know’d you was here.  You should be ashamed ob yourself!”

“Hallo!  Moses, what are you talking to over there?”

“Nuffin’, Massa Nadgel.  I was on’y habin’ a brief conv’sation wid a member ob de insect wurld in commemoration ob de purfesser.  Leastwise, if it warn’t a insect it must hab bin suffm’ else.  Won’t you go in, Miss Winnie?”