Page 81 - Adventures in shadow-land

that if she wanted to find Aster she must look far
him j and Eva determined to examine every hole

she saw, in hopes that with patience and perse­
verance she might at last succeed in finding her

lost charge, of whom, in spite of all the trouble he
had given her, she had grown very fond.

But if she had been surprised at seeing a white
mark over every hole, instead of the one she had

made, she was still more astonished when she
saw that in every cranny which she examined
there sat either a large black-legged spider, with

a gold and scarlet back, and eyes which shone in
the dark like little bright stars, or else there

squatted snugly in it a huge green frog, with
a wide mouth and projecting black eyes; while

just beyond her reach there would flutter every
now and then a little green flag, like the scrap of

velvet, as Eva thought, which the teeth of the
frog had torn from Aster's coat.

Yet the child climbed slowly up the wall, fear­
less of the spiders and the frogs, which she knew

had no power to harm her, even if they had
wished it. But seeing them, and knowing, as she
did, that these two creatures, in the forest through