, because, though we had read many times about a
moat being dragged for missing heirs and lost wills, we really had never
thought about exactly how it was done.

"Grappling-irons are right, I believe," Denny said, "but I don't suppose
they'd have any at the farm."

And we asked, and found they had never even heard of them. I think
myself he meant some other word, but he was quite positive.

So then we got a sheet off Oswald's bed, and we all took our shoes and
stockings off, and we tried to see if the sheet would drag the bottom of
the moat, which is shallow at that end. But it would keep floating on
the top of the water, and when we tried sewing stones into one end of
it, it stuck on something in the bottom, and when we got it up it was
torn. We were very sorry, and the sheet was in an awful mess; but the
girls said they were sure they could wash it in the basin in their room,
and we thought as we had torn it any way, we might as well go on. That
washing never came off.

"No human being," Noel said, "knows half the treasures hidden in this
dark tarn."

And we decided we would drag a bit more at that end, and work gradually
round to under the dairy window where the milk-pan was. We could not see
that part very well, because of the bushes that grow between the cracks
of the stones where the house goes down into the moat. And opposite the
dairy window the barn goes straight down into the moat too. It is like
pictures of Venice; but you cannot get opposite the dairy window anyhow.

We got the sheet down again when we had tied the torn parts together in
a bunch with string, and Oswald was just saying:

"Now then, my hearties, pull together, pull with a will! One, two,
three," when suddenly Dora dropped her bit of the sheet with a piercing
shriek and cried out:

"Oh! it's all wormy at the bottom. I felt them wriggle." And she was out
of the water almost before the words were out of her mouth. The other
girls all scuttled out too, and they let the sheet go in such a hurry
that we had no time to steady ourselves, and one of us went right in,
and the rest got wet up to our waistbands. The one who went right in was
only H. O.; but Dora made an awful fuss and said it was our fault. We
told her what we thought, and it ended in the girls going in with H. O.
to change his things. We had some more gooseberries while they were
gone. Dora was in an awful wax when she went away, but she is not of a
sullen disposition though som