“Well, Dennis—and this was the story you confided to Mr. Creel?”
“The story, sir; as you know it all now—and God bless you and him!”
“And do you think the poor woman there had knowledge of the treasure she bore away in the skull?”
“I cannot think so. He was not the man to put his confidence in any of her sex; and you must remember, sir, that he had always carried a make-believe in his eye-socket, that was a mark of the familiar terror of his glance; and that ’twas his cunning only substituted the stone for the glass. That the thing dropped out anywhere on its passage to and from is the most likely solution.”
“No doubt; and we can’t hunt over seven square miles or so of grassy down, as we hunted—that reminds me; you never heard of our discovery in the wardrobe, when——”
A joyous whoop sounded in their ears, and, as Tuke got to his feet, the aperture was darkened by the figures of the returned explorers.
“Now,” said Sir David, looking down into the pit, with his arms akimbo—“ain’t we heroes? And where would you guess we’ve been to the trouble to pitch our camp?”
“Not in mine own grounds?” said Tuke. “No, no!”
“Who the deuce has been tellin’ you? P’raps you think that spells the end of our difficulties? Are you Julius Cæsar, sir—or whoever the cove was that went over Mount Blank? I tell you there’s a range of drifts between this and the house as big as Snowdon.”
“Then, now comes my turn. Stay you here and leave the rest to me.”