“For sure,” he said to himself, “I’m not going to let so many people suspect what treasure is lying under their feet.”
He was encouraged by the hollowness of the sound; but then again his spirits sank, for he found no spot where his spade could make the slightest impression, nay, he doubted whether he could stick a pin in anywhere, so hard were the stones.
When it had grown dark, and the bridge was still crowded, he began to fear that all the people were there for the same purpose as himself; but he was determined that he would tire them out; and indeed the numbers did gradually decrease.
St. Paul’s had just struck twelve, when a stranger, stopping just in front of our friend, said—
“Well, Tim, you have come a long way, but you might have done better nearer home. You know, Tim, the lane that runs at the back of your cabin, and you know the old wall, for I’ve seen you digging under that many a night. Well, Tim, you were in the right road, but too near home. I’ve seen you turn sharp round that wall, and, crossing the big bog, look longingly at the heap of stones behind the furze-bush in Terry O’Toole’s field.”
“Yes,” sighed Tim; “but it would have been more than my life was worth to dig there, for though Terry knows well that his whole field is nothing but ugly stones, he would murther man, woman, or child who stuck a spade in any part of the ground—the big baste.”
“True for you, Tim,” the stranger said, “but the gold is there.” After these words the stranger was gone as suddenly as he had appeared, and poor Tim was left, more puzzled than ever.
“May be,” he said to himself, “its desaiving me he is, that he may have the digging of Lunnon-bridge all to hisself, but then sorrow a spadeful of earth could any one throw up here, in all his life. No, it was to meet the sthrainger that I came all the way here without knowing it, so now I’ll go back to ould Ireland.”
Tim did go back, and, after selling his potatoe-field, bought the waste bit of land, which O’Toole was pleased to call a field.