“Well, the first place I’d try is right in this little hollow. We’ll go right along to it.”
Mr. Murphy shouldered his spade, pick and axe and directed Miss Katherine to the spot, a little sandy hollow between two little sandy mounds.
“Now you must keep guard while I dig,” said Mr. Murphy. “It wouldn’t do to let others into the secret you know.”
Miss Katherine was quite disappointed, for she had anticipated watching the excavation sink deeper and deeper until the spade suddenly struck the iron lid of a box, and a king’s ransom glowed at their feet. But she realized the wisdom of this request and uncomplainingly complied with it.
In silence and with inward protest Mr. Murphy plied his spade until he was obliged to straighten his aching back. He looked at his task mistress entreatingly, but she was on guard and had no eyes for the toiler. The poor man gazed about him in distress. Would he fall from grace if he took a little rest?
Fortunately for Mr. Murphy, at this moment, Miss Katherine’s eye fell upon the little lunch basket she carried. A pang of remorse shot through her heart as she turned and beheld her hero leaning wearily upon his spade.
At the suggestion of lunch Mr. Murphy climbed out of prison with such alacrity that Miss Katherine’s soft heart suffered another pang. But as pity is akin to another, warmer and tendered passion let us hope all was working for the highest good of Miss Katherine and Mr. Murphy.
Whatever hopes of a prolonged rest that gentleman had at first entertained were soon destroyed by a word or two from his inexorable partner, and again the gentle chuck, chuck as the spade struck against the soft sand, was the only sound that broke the silence.
Miss Katherine, though not watching the digger, kept time with his steady spade and strained her ear to catch a clink instead of a click. That would announce the bursting of an old leather bag or the striking upon an iron box. There it would be! Gold! Gold glittering in the light after years of darkness!
“Damn it!” broke in upon Miss Katherine’s golden dream.