“Well, how about you?” asked Tom, when they had all made their way off the old wharf to shore.
“Oh, so-so. I’m badly battered up, but still in the ring. One foot is well soaked, but it’s warm weather and I guess I won’t get the epizootic. Say, though, I’m going to be lame,” and Jack limped along.
An examination showed that his right leg was painfully skinned and bruised, where it had scraped on the edges of the hole in the plank, as his foot went through the timber.
“We’ll bandage it up when we get to camp,” said Tom, as he used an extra handkerchief on the worst cut of his chum’s leg. “Do you feel able to go on to the mill, or shall we turn back, Jack?”
“Go on, of course,” declared the injured one. “I’m not going to let a little thing like a game leg stand between me and a treasure hunt. Lead on, captain!”
“That’s the talk!” exclaimed Bert. “You’ll get the best of the pirates’ hoard yet.”
“Now go a bit easy,” cautioned Tom. “It may be that Old Wallace is around somewhere, and, as this is his property, he’d be justified in making a row if he found us here. So go a bit slow until we size up the situation.”
They were on the lower side of the mill now, the side nearest the river. The ancient structure consisted of three stories. The lower one was a sort of basement, on a level with the lower ground, where it was evident that wagons had driven in to receive their loads of grain. Here too, was some of the old machinery of the mill, the levers that controlled the water gate and other things, but now all rotted and fallen into decay.
“Say, this would be the place where the treasure would be buried, if anywhere,” declared Jack.