s manner and cleared out a fairly wide, squarish hole, three
of whose sides were cut down through earth, the fourth, near the foot of
the wall, being bedded together loose stones and rubbish and pretty well
open.

Almost every spadeful had been carefully examined for traces of the
olden occupation, the doctor during the first portion of the time having
been constantly stepping down into the hole and out again to examine
some suggestive looking piece of rubbish, until Mark's attention was
drawn to Dan, who kept on trying to catch his eye and giving him nods
and winks and jerks of the elbow, pointing too again and again at the
doctor's back, but all in vain.

"What does he mean by all that?" thought the boy. "Oh, bother your dumb
motions! Why don't you speak?"

"Pst!" whispered Dan. "Can't you see? You tell him. He keeps on
a-hindering me, hopping up and down like a cat on hot bricks. You tell
him to stop up there and turn over every basketful as they chucks upon
the heap."

A delicate hint was given to the doctor, and from that time forward he
left the little digger room to work.

All at once, just as Buck was depositing his empty basket within Dan's
reach, and the boys were standing at the edge looking on at where the
sailor had begun to scrape away some of the loose crumbs, as he called
them, from the side of the bottom of the hole, there was a faint
rustling sound and the man dropped his spade, stepped back and bounded
out of the excavation as actively as a cat.

"What's the matter, mate?" cried Buck, "a arn't given you a nip?"

"Wall's not crumbling, is it?" cried Mark excitedly.

"No, sir. Did you see it?"

"See it? See what?"

"Dunno, sir. Thought perhaps you gents up there might have ketched
sight of it. Summat alive."

"Eh? What's that?" cried the doctor sharply, from where he was poring
over the rubbish which the keepers had last deposited on the heap; and
he hurried to the edge of the hole. "What have you found?"

"Nowt, sir," replied the little sailor. "I was just scraping up the
crumbs where there's all the rough stones yonder as I have been leaving
so as not to loosen the foundations, when something scuttled along
there. Gi' me quite a turn;" and as he spoke there was a sharp _click,
click_, from where Sir James sat sentry on the top of the wall.

"Humph!" said the doctor. "Mouse or rat."

"Mouse or rat, sir?" said Dan sharply. "What, are there them sort of
jockeys here?"