He began to live over again, in spite of himself, the adventure of the night before; the descent of the two flights of steps, the cliff, the groping along the passage, the glassy stare of the dead man’s eyes. Then suddenly he was struck with the idea that down under the ground, perhaps at that very moment underneath his feet, the dead messenger of a dead king was still keeping watch and ward over his master’s gold. Out here in the staring sunshine, with the hot haze dancing over the narrow river, and the clang of the workmen’s hammers coming to his ears from the shipbuilders’ yards, all those experiences of the darkness seemed like a dream to him.
And yet he had seen it all with his own eyes, so he had to assure himself; and the old louis d’or which he had picked up among the dust of hundreds of years was still in his pocket. He drew it out and looked at it, and the coin seemed, by its incontrovertible reality, to put more practical thoughts into his head. That underground passage must have an end, an opening; and that opening would probably be on this side of the river. Slowly, thoughtfully, he retraced his steps, until he was exactly opposite the perpendicular cliff on which the castle, its foundations deep in the solid rock, stood.
The ground on which Rees was standing, on the opposite bank, was an open and very undulating meadow, under the numerous hillocks of which the imaginative could fancy the graves of the besieging Puritans to have been made. It was so open, indeed, so fully exposed, not only to passers by, but to occupants of the cattle lodge and of a couple of adjacent cottages, that Amos Goodhare, in his exhaustive scourings of the neighborhood, had never dared to carry on his researches there except at night.
Now Rees, less cautious, found himself strolling very slowly along with eyes fixed intently on the thick grass, which, cropped close by cattle on the higher ground, grew thick and lush at the water’s edge. At last he sat down immediately opposite the window in the rock which gave light to the vaulted apartment in which his adventures had begun. His feet were only just above the sedge, and the grassy ground on which he was sitting was so soft from the heavy rains that he found a great slab of earth giving way under his weight, and sliding gently down with him towards the water. He scrambled up hastily, but in regaining his feet he caused the displaced earth to come down still faster, so that he fell down on his hands and knees and cut his left wrist against a stone. This stone proved to be the upper edge of a great slab of rock, which the freshly-moved turf had grown over and hidden. Rees drew a long breath. Was this the other entrance to the underground passage?
It was impossible to ascertain this now, in broad daylight, exposed to curious eyes. With a wildly beating heart, every thought but of the lost treasure again forgotten, Rees walked quickly away in the direction of the town library. He felt that he was bursting with this new discovery, that he must confide it to some one. Goodhare received him, seated in the library, surrounded by a pile of books of reference, the leaves of which he was busily turning for a pale, spectacled young man, who was taking notes by his side. Rees watched the librarian in amazement. It seemed scarcely conceivable that this grave, reverend-looking man, absorbed in intellectual work, and taking deep delight in it, could be the same creature whose eyes last night had shone with evil passions and almost ghoulish greed. In another moment, however, the spell was broken; Amos looked up, and there passed over his face the strange change which was like the peeping out of the spirit of evil through a hermit’s eyes. He finished his work, however, after only a brief, respectful request to Rees to wait.
As soon as the spectacled young man had left them together, Rees, boiling with impatience, dashed across the room and communicated his discovery. Then they formed their plans for prosecuting the search, but, in their dread of prying eyes, decided to put off the execution of it until the next moonless night.
During the four following days, in the course of which they thought it prudent not to revisit the castle, all three of the conspirators lived in a state of intermittent fever, haunted by fears that some accident would lay bare to others the secret which the earth had so long hidden. These fears, however, proved unfounded. On the night when they all groped their way to the river bank with no other light than a dark lantern, they found the stone slab and the loosened earth exactly as Rees had left them.
Then began a task much heavier than they had expected. The stone was not far above high-water mark, and was situated near a bend in the river, so that the earth had accumulated upon it, especially at its base, during the ages which had elapsed since it was last displaced. The three men dug alternately for more than two hours and a half before there was any possibility of moving the stone. When they at last got clear of the surmounting obstructions, however, the task of raising the stone was comparatively an easy one. For, buried in the sand beside it, was a rusty iron bar, which they used, as it had evidently been used before, as a lever. The only thing which caused them still to doubt whether this was indeed the entrance to the passage was its extreme nearness to the water. However, all doubts on this point were soon set at rest; for, on raising the stone, they found that it covered the entrance to a narrow passage, not high enough even for a short man to stand upright in, which sloped rapidly down to the left, then, with a sharp curve, dipped more suddenly still to the right.
These facts Rees, who, armed with the miner’s lantern, entered first, ascertained after a very few minutes’ exploration. But at the bend the air grew so foul and heavy that he retreated, and again had recourse to his rope and his air tube. Thus equipped, he went on with his researches, and proceeding cautiously down the second incline, which was steep and exceedingly rough under the tread, he soon came to a third abrupt bend, after which the passage, now grown so much steeper that notches had been cut in the ground to help the passenger, turned again sharply in the opposite direction. When he had gone a few steps Rees stepped upon something, the sound of which set his heart beating violently and caused him to come to a dead stop. The incline was so abrupt that he had been walking with his head well back, feeling for each notch with careful feet. Stooping down he now saw that the ground was strewn with coins, grown dingy in the dust, but the reddish glitter of which, when he picked some up and rubbed them on his coat-sleeve, proclaimed them to be gold.
It was true then—the story of the lost treasure was true!