'I began to fear so myself,' responded William John, stroking very gently the little White Hare. 'This is my first opportunity of coming here.'
'Have you found the Magic Horn?' the small creature asked anxiously.
'Not yet, and I have never stopped looking for it since I was last here. I have searched all over the old castle, and every stone has been lifted on the place, and the ground dug up both outside the ruins and inside, and I am afraid the Magic Horn was not hidden away in that old castle, as you said.'
'It was hidden there, and is there now,' insisted the little White Hare, 'and I do hope you aren't going to give up looking for it.'
'I won't, for your sake, you dear little soft thing!' cried the boy, and again he stroked her gently and tenderly; 'and as you are sure it is there somewhere, I'll search until I find it.'
'Have you looked in the cave under the castle?' asked the little White Hare.
'No,' returned William John; 'the entrance to it is not known, and even if it were, the passage leading down to the cave is so foul with bad air, my guardian said, that it would be death to anybody who went through it.'
'If you are not afraid to go down into the cave, I can give you a plant that will purify all the foul air you pass through.'
'I will not be afraid for your sake, dear little White Hare,' said the boy.
The Hare vanished, and in a little while became visible again, and in her mouth she held a strange-looking weed, the like of which he had never seen before.
'It is called the little All-Pure,' said the White Hare, as William John took it in his hand. 'Keep it close to your heart until you have discovered the passage to the cave, and when it is foul hold it in your hand until its brightness shines on the Magic Horn.'
Again she disappeared, and the boy, after waiting some time to see if she would appear again, went back to the house, where he found his Great-Aunt Ann limping in at the front-door.
The old lady had hurt her leg in getting out of the gig, and when he told her he had been in the orchard, she made her slight accident an excuse to send him back to his home, which she did that same day.
William John did not have the chance of paying another visit to his Great-Aunt Ann until he was a youth of nineteen, and he would not have come then if he had waited to be invited.
