More and more rapidly he felt himself pulled along, until it was as much as he could do to save himself, in the darkness, from injury against the rough walls. When he reached the cliff, he was indeed thankful for the help the rope afforded him; for it rose almost sheer from the ground, with but few notches down the side on which the feet could rest. After that, however, the rest was comparatively easy. Impelled to increased speed by the fact that he was now nigh to suffocation, as poor Sep could not draw the rope and keep the tube straight at the same time, he reached the bottom of the upper staircase in very few moments, and tearing off the macintosh mask, drank in the air in great draughts.
“Are you all right, Rees? Are you all right?” asked Sep, in tones of deep anxiety.
“All right?” sang out the young fellow, in a voice which thrilled with triumph. “Yes, righter than I ever was in my life, for I’ve found Lord Hugh!”
Scrambling up the remaining steps, he flung himself down, panting, by the side of Sep, who threw his arms round him with genuine delight, which, to do him justice, was caused more by the sight of his companion safe and well than by the news he brought.
When Rees, now again feverish with excitement, told him his adventures in thrilling whispers, Sep was carried away with astonishment and delight, which reached their climax on the production of the piece of metal which Rees had picked up in the darkness. For this proved to be, as the latter had supposed, a coin, heavy, clumsy, of a fashion they had never seen; but it was gold, genuine gold. The young men looked at it, rubbed it, turned it over reverently in their hands. There was a romance about this gold, the property of a king long since passed out of reach of the need of it, and guarded for more than two centuries by a dead man, which appealed to the imagination.
“You think it was Lord Hugh of Thirsk I saw down there, don’t you?” asked Rees in a low voice.
“Who else should it be? Did you notice his dress?”
“No, nothing but his eyes, staring straight at me, I tell you, like those of a living man. I thought he was alive. If he had been dead two hundred and forty years, he would be crumbled to dust, wouldn’t he?”
“I don’t know. Shall you go down there again?”
“No,” answered Rees, with a shiver. “I don’t think so. I—I suppose it’s sentimentality, but even if he has down there with him the thousands that old beggar expects, I don’t like the idea of robbing a dead man of what he’s watched over for more than two hundred years.”