“There can’t be many more,” Uncle Dick replied. “We’ll say there is one more apartment, in which my nephew’s hens are cooped up. Now, unless they set up a cackling, how are we to know where to look for them? I think we had better leave them to their fate. No! Will, listen! When we get back to town, speak about these hens incidentally to some little tobacco-chewer, and within an hour a force of would-be desperadoes will troop down to this cave, and liberate these hens or perish in the ruins of the general demolition!”
To economize time and space, to ease the reader’s anxiety, and to maintain the reputation of this history for exactness and solidity, it may here be stated that although Will set a band of street Arabs on the track of those miserable hens and chickens, they were never found, and the probability is that they are slowly becoming fossils.
The three then made a burning stave serve for a torch, and marched through the cavern in which Will had found the water. Then they returned and went into the “best bedroom.”
“I have a fancy that there is money buried here,—buried, or concealed in some article of furniture,” Mr. Mortimer observed.
“I doubt that,” said Uncle Dick. “Now, if your son were well, he and Will might come here and ransack every cavern. What a pity we interrupted those boys! They would have amused themselves here all day, and would certainly have found whatever there may be to find! Poor little fellows, their fun had just begun! Well, they will be back again, and then they are welcome to all the spoil they can carry away.”
Having fastened the outer door, the party returned to the city.
Chapter XXII.
Uncle Dick Evolves His Story.
The next day Mr. Lawrence, leaving his nephew still with Henry, went to the town of which he had spoken. Here insanity had taken hold of him, and here he expected to unravel his mysteries.