"Maybe I could if you'd let me take hold of your hand," suggested
Teddy.
"Then you'd pull me in, and we'd both be down there."
Ted saw that this was so. He tried again to get out, but could not,
for mixed with the leaves were many dry, brown pine needles from the
trees growing overhead; and if you have ever been in the woods you
know how slippery pine needles are when the ground is covered with
them. Teddy slipped back again and again.
"Oh, Ted! can't you _ever_ get up?" asked Janet, almost ready to cry.
"Oh, I'll get out somehow," he said. Then dangling down from a tree
behind his sister, he saw a long wild grapevine, which was almost like
a piece of rope.
"If I had hold of that I could pull myself out," Teddy said. "See if
you can reach it to me, Jan."
After two or three trials his sister did this. Then, holding to a
loose end of the grapevine while the other end was twined fast round a
tree, Teddy pulled himself out of the hole. Once on firm ground he
made the loose end of the grapevine fast to a stone that lay near the
edge of the hole.
"What made you do that?" asked Janet.
"So the next time I get down there I can pull myself out," Teddy
answered.
"Are you going down there again?" Jan queried.
"Course I am!" declared Ted. "I didn't half look in the cave. It's a
big place. I could see in only a little way, 'cause it was so dark.
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