AN EXPEDITION. 373 



against the Ogres, and, by her own particular desire, Piccoletta 

 went with it. 



Under her guidance, the troop marched first towards the 

 pitfall whence she had escaped, not with any view of attacking 

 the Ogre who had occupied, but who they believed to have 

 been dislodged from it by the storm, but for the purpose of 

 strengthening their bodies, if not their hearts, by a plentiful 

 meal off the manna, or sweet bread, of the oak from which 

 their little pioneer had fallen. 



Having accomplished, without interruption, this desirable 

 preliminary, they had not proceeded much farther before they 

 came upon another excavation of which the ugly character, 

 could they have doubted it, was pretty clearly evidenced by 

 the appearance, near upon its verge, of several dead bodies, the 

 cast-out remains of their fellow-citizens. Here they came to a 

 halt, and formed a circle as close and as deep as their numbers 

 would permit, around the mouth of the pit-fall, which had been 

 constructed, as usual, in a sandy soil. Thus they remained, 

 still as mice ; and quiet as a mouse, too, remained the cat-lik. 

 Ogre (if Ogre was there) at the bottom of his cavern, which, 

 from the prudent distance of their position, his besiegers were 

 unable to discern. Hour after hour passed, till from very 

 inaction the courage of the surrounding party, which had arrived 

 in tolerable spirits, began to flag. Declining daylight did not 

 augment their valour ; and, as surrounding objects grew indis- 

 tinct, the passing of a moth or bat even the rustle of a leaf- 

 sent a tremor through the fearful circle. It would have been 

 broken, likely enough, by desertion, under cover of darkness, 

 but for dread of other pitfalls, or their makers, stalking about 

 under the same nocturnal cloak. The night, however, ended 

 without one alarm, except from phantom fears. Piccoletta 

 was the first who suggested that, perhaps, after all, they were 

 only surrounding an empty trap ; and was the first also, when 

 morning came, to creep softly and lightly towards its circum- 

 ference, to ascertain how this might be. She seemed right in 



