Edward’s father got the gardener from next door—with, at the suggestion of Gustus, a pick—the hole in the rockery was enlarged, and they all got in.
And when they got to the place where Edward was, there, sure enough, was Edward, pinned by the hand between a piece of wood and a piece of rock. Neither the father nor the gardener noticed any metal. Edward had fainted.
[p55]
They got him out; a couple of strokes with the pick released his hand, but it was bruised and bleeding.
They all turned to go, but they had not gone twenty yards before there was a crash and a loud report like thunder, and a slow rumbling, rattling noise very dreadful to hear.
‘Get out of this quick, sir,’ said the gardener; ‘the roof’s fell in; this part of the caves ain’t safe.’
Edward was very feverish and ill for several days, during which he told his father the whole story—of which his father did not believe a word. But he was kind to Gustus, because Gustus was evidently fond of Edward.
When Edward was well enough to walk in the garden his father and he found that a good deal of the shrubbery had sunk, so that the trees looked as though they were growing in a pit.
It spoiled the look of the garden, and Edward’s father decided to move the trees to the other side.
When this was done the first tree uprooted showed a dark hollow below it. The man is not born who will not examine and explore a dark hollow in his own grounds. So Edward’s father explored.
[p56]
This is the true story of the discovery of that extraordinary vein of silver, copper, and gold which has excited so much interest in scientific and mining circles. Learned papers have been written about it, learned professors have been rude to each other about it, but no one knows how it came there except Gustus and Edward and you and me. Edward’s father is quite as ignorant as any one else, but he is much richer than most of them; and, at any rate, he knows that it was Gustus who first told him of the gold-mine, and who risked being lagged—arrested by the police, that is—rather than let Edward wait till morning with his hand fast between wood and rock.