I
felt a lot of things all tied together in a rough bag or cloth--heavy,
too, and of course all clammy with moisture or mould or something like
that. No wonder--I felt all green-mouldy myself, after only a minute
or two.

I tugged at the rope, and, almost before I knew it, I was out again in
the dancing speckle of the sunshine sifted through the leaves. Blinded
by the sudden glare which sent blobs of colour dancing across my
eyeballs, as if I had looked at the sun, I did not realize for a moment
that I had brought anything with me.

"Let go!" I heard Mr. Ablethorpe say, and I was quite unconscious what
I was holding on to. Yet what I had found was little enough to the
eye--a piece of rough sacking, roughly sewn about a quantity of
metallic objects which jingled as Mr. Ablethorpe cut the outer covering
open with his big "gully" knife.

"Money!" the thought came natural to a boy; "have I disinterred a
treasure?"

And for the moment I was all ready to go back again to look for more.

But the blade went on cutting, and presently the contents tinkled out
upon the bank--about a dozen and a half of copper rings, rather thick,
and each made with a hook at the bottom. I could not imagine what they
were for.

But Mr. Ablethorpe bounded upon them, examining each one before putting
it in his pocket. Lastly he looked at the piece of canvas in which
they had been wrapped, long and carefully.

"Ah!" he said, "that, I think, will do!"

And he closed the iron sliding door carefully, as it had been before,
and thrusting his fingers into the shallow pool, he lifted up double
handfuls of oozy mud and plastered it all over the entrance.

"When that is dry," he said, "it will take a clever man to tell where
you have poked your nose this afternoon, Joseph!"

This seemed likely enough and satisfactory, from his point of view.
But, as for me, I wanted very much to be told what it was all about.

So I asked him what it was I had found, and why he wanted me to crawl
up there, at any rate.

"You found some copper rings and a piece of dirty canvas," he said,
"neither more nor less. And I asked you to go up there because I was
too fat to go myself. Were you nearly at the end, think you?"

I told him no--that the passage seemed to widen as it went farther on.
I think that at these words he was nearly replacing the rope, which he
had begun to coil, round my waist again.

But he looked at his watch, and shook his head.

"We h