"Can't we pick out one or two stones?"
"We can try."
The candle was set down on the stone flooring, close to the wall, and the two lads started to work without delay. In a corner of his jacket, Dick found an old jack-knife that had not been taken away from him, and this he used on the mortar. Sam had nothing but a long, rusty iron nail, so their progress was necessarily slow.
"Don't seem to be making much headway," observed Sam, after pegging away for a while. "Wish we had a hammer and a cold chisel."
"If we used a hammer they could hear us, Sam."
At last they had one stone loose and pulled it out of the wall. Holding up the light, they saw that there was a wall of plain dirt behind it.
"Beaten!" muttered the youngest Rover, and a disappointed look came over his face. "Dick, we have had our labor for our pains."
"I am not so sure of that, Sam."
"Why not, I'd like to know? That doesn't look much like a passageway."
"That is true, but we may be able to dig through the dirt without great trouble, and if this spot is close to the outer wall of the building—"