plosions, and, here and there, a
horse appeared, looking wistfully at the ruins of its former home.
There, the intending diggers stood, gazing mutely for a while on the
scene of desolation.

"'Sandy soil, draining both ways, and undercover,' is what we want,
Coristine," said the Squire. The two walked back and forward along the
ridge, rejecting rock and depression and timbered land. They searched
the foundations of houses and sheds, found the trap under Rawdon's own
house that led to the now utterly caved-in tunnel, and tried likely
spots where once the stables stood, only to find accumulations of
rubbish. A steel square such as carpenters use, was found among the
chips in the stone-yard, and of this Coristine made a primitive
surveyor's implement by which he sought to take the level of the ground.
"Bring your eye down here, Mr. Carruthers," he said. "I see," answered
the Squire; "but, man, yon's just a conglomeration o' muckle stanes."
The lawyer replied, "That's true, Squire, but it's the height of land,
and that top stone lies almost too squarely to be natural. Let us try
them at least. It will do no harm, and the day is young yet." They went
forward to a spot beyond the stone yard, on the opposite side from the
burnt stables, which they saw had once been railed off, for the
blackened stumps of the posts were still in the ground. It was a
picturesque mass of confusion, apparently an outcrop of the limestone,
not uncommon in that region. But the lawyer probed the ground all about
it. It was light dry soil, with no trace of a rocky bottom. Without a
lever, their work was hard, but they succeeded in throwing off the
large flat protecting slab, and in scattering its rocky supports. "Man,
Coristine, I believe you're richt." ejaculated the perspiring
Carruthers. Then he took the pick and loosened the ground, while the
lawyer removed the earth with his spade. "There's no' a root nor a
muckle stane in the haill o't, Coristine; this groond's been wrocht
afore, my lad." So they kept on, till at last the pick rebounded with a
metallic clang. "Let me clear it, Squire," asked the lawyer, and, at
once, his spade sent the sand flying, and revealed a box of japanned
tin, the counterpart of that discovered by Muggins, which had only
contained samples of grindstones. A little more picking, and a little
more spading, and the box came easily out. It was heavy, wonderfully
heavy, and it was padlocked. The sharp edge of the spade loosened