"
We were now come to the foot of the first waterfall, an obvious
_cul de sac_ for a party which included two ladies and a sick man on
a litter. I stood gazing up at the wet, slippery rocks by which I
had made my ascent yesterday, and searching in vain for a more
practicable path. Dr. Beauregard halted and turned upon me with a
smile.
"A moment," said he, "and you will grant that my privacy is rather
neatly protected. But first"--he pointed to the water pouring past
us from the pool beneath the fall--"you may remark that the stream
here has more than twice the volume of the stream you see coming down
the rocks."
I looked. The difference was plain enough, and I had been a fool in
failing to observe it.
"The reason being," he went on, "that a second and larger stream
flows into the pool under the very stones on which you are standing.
I myself laid that channel for it, almost ten years ago, and Nature
has very kindly helped to disguise it. Now, if you will follow me--"
He drew aside a mat of creepers overhanging a bush to the left of the
path, and, stooping, disappeared into a dim, green tunnel, so
artfully contrived that even without its curtain of creepers it
suggested no more than a chance gap in the undergrowth.
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