Mrs. Trip and Jim were then packed off to prepare some sort of supper for the hungry men, while the doctor and the others went to see about opening the big shed.
The key and the lock of the small side door were both of peculiar construction, and it took them a few minutes of fumbling before they could get the door open.
“It is what they call an unpickable lock. Skeleton keys are no sort of good for this kind of job,” remarked one of the miners who ought to know, as back in the past—a past long since expiated by honest repentance and subsequent upright living—he had served an apprenticeship at the risky business of burglary.
“The door is made of pretty good stuff too. It would not be easy to stave it in, I guess,” said another, who had been a carpenter, as he passed his hand admiringly over the stout timbers of that well-made door.
“The shed altogether is the soundest bit of building to be found this side of Lytton,” announced a third; and just then the key turned in the lock, and the door opened.
“Help! help! Get me out of this, quick! I thought you were never coming!” exclaimed a smothered voice from somewhere.
“Seeing that you have waited so long, it won’t hurt you to stay as you are for half an hour longer,” the doctor said calmly, as he flashed the light of his lantern round the big shed, and made an examination of things generally.
“Who are you, then, and how did you get in?” asked the man hidden away in the coffin, with surprise and anxiety in his tone.
“That is just the question that occurred to us about you. Were you in a trance, that they packed you up in this sort of box to ship you off to the Flowery Land?” asked the doctor, with a twinkle in his eye.
“You just let me out of this, and I’ll tell you all about it,” whined the man, in a pleading tone.