Ambrose dropped the pickaxe off his shoulder with a sigh of relief and sat down by it on the ground. He felt strangely indifferent to beginning the search now that he was really here, and might dig as long as he liked without anyone to say him nay. David’s remarks about ghosts had not made him more at his ease. Ghosts were all very well when you were safe at home, with well-known people and things all round you; but here, on this lonely Common, no subject could have been worse chosen. It was stupid of David. He sat beside his pickaxe feeling more creepy and nervous and uncomfortable every moment, until David, who had been carefully examining the inclosed space, struck his spade firmly on a certain spot and exclaimed:
“Here’s a good place to begin!”
“Why?” asked Ambrose moodily, without moving.
“It looks,” said David, kneeling down to see more closely, “as if it had been dug up before.”
“Well, then,” returned Ambrose, “it wouldn’t be a good place, because they’ll have found all the things.”
It was a bare spot in one side of the bank where there was no turf, and the earth looked loose and crumbling. David rose and struck his spade into it.
“You try somewhere else,” he said, “I mean to dig here.”
A little roused by this example Ambrose took up the heavy pickaxe again and went over to David’s side. He was making a good deep hole, but it was very narrow because his spade was so small.
“Wait a minute,” said Ambrose, “let me have a go at it.”
He raised up the pickaxe with all his strength, down it came, and stuck so fast that he and David together could hardly get it out again. But when it was dislodged they found it had done good service, for it broke up the earth all round the hole, so that they could now get both their spades into it and work away together. For some minutes they went on in silence, David with even steady strokes and Ambrose with feverishly quick ones. Nothing came to light but little round stones and chalky mould, not even a coin or a bone!