of the spade before it was driven home and cut them in
half.

"Poor old Samson!" said Fred; "he seems to think that everything belongs
to him."

"So does our Nat," replied Scarlett. "I often fancy he thinks I belong
to him as well, from the way he shouts and orders me about."

"But you never do what he tells you."

"Of course not; and--Oh, Fred!"

"What's the matter?"

"We've got the rope; but what are we going to fasten the end to when we
go down?" Fred stopped short, and rubbed one ear.

"You hold it while I go down, and I'll hold it while you go down."

"I shouldn't like to try that," said Scarlett. "We're not strong
enough."

"Nonsense! Not if we let the rope bite on the edge of the hole?"

"That would not do," said Scarlett, decisively.

"I know, then," cried Fred. "Come along."

"No. Let's go back and get an iron bar to drive down in the earth."

"I've got a better way than that," said Fred. "There's a pole across
the opening in that stone wall half-way up the hill. We'll lay that
across, and tie the rope to it."

Scarlett nodded acquiescence, and they trotted on to the rough stone
wall, built up of loose fragments piled one on the other, the gateway
left for the passage of cattle being closed by a couple of poles laid
across like bars, their ends being slipped in holes left for the
purpose.

The straighter of these two was slipped out by Scarlett and shouldered,
and they hastened on, attracted by the discovery they had made, but
recalling, as they went on, that they had been told before about the
existence of this opening by more than one person, though it had slipped
from their memory for the time.

"Who's going down first?" said Fred, as they slowly climbed the last
hundred yards of the slope.

"I will."

"No; I think I ought to go first."

"Long bent, short bent," said Scarlett, picking a couple of strands of
grass, breaking them off so that one was nearly double the length of the
other, and then, after placing two ends level and hiding the others,
offering them to his companion to draw one out.

Fred drew the shorter, and Scarlett had the right to go down first--a
right which but for the look of the thing he would willingly have
surrendered. For as they reached the long, narrow, grass-grown crack,
the strange whispering and plashing sounds which came from below
suggested unknown dangers, which were more repellent than the
attractions of the mysterious hole.

Fred looked