There was a willow, a fine tree with two big branches, almost as large as the parent stem, about ten feet from the ground. There was no excrescence from this tree small enough to hang the picture upon, and I passed on to the next, a poplar. Here, at about five feet from the earth, there was a twig from which the picture might be got to hang in a lopsided kind of way; but the twig was evidently a young shoot, and had probably sprung into existence since the picture had been taken to Hogland and buried, so that I spared myself a seven-foot dig beneath that poplar.
Then there was a lime, a small one, near the end of the garden; and into the trunk of this tree, on the wall side, I discovered that a nail had been knocked. I grew hot and cold at the sight, for I thought I had "struck oil" at last.
But, alas! when I had hung the picture by its little ring to this nail, and tried to get my face where the eyes would be fixed upon it, I found that the portrait glared at a spot about half-way down the brick wall, and not at any place on the ground whereinto a man might sink a spade.
There were no more trees, and I now turned my attention to the wall itself, and looked for nails up and down, and from end to end. I found one, to my delight, and having hung up the portrait, was engaged in the occupation of lying on my stomach and wooing the stony glare of old Clutterbuck's lack-lustre eyes, when Jack mounted the wall just above it, and nearly fell off again for laughing at the ridiculous spectacle which he said I presented. However, I focussed the eyes, and planted a stick in the exact spot.
"It's the only nail in the garden, Jack," I cried excitedly. "I do believe we've hit off the place at last!"
"Good!" said Jack grimly; "now dig for all you're worth!"
I did dig. I dug that seven-foot hole as though at the bottom of it some terrible earthworm had seized by the throat all that I held most dear in the world. Never were seven feet of earth displaced in quicker time by human energy.
But there was nothing there.
"Dig another three-foot-six!" said Jack from the wall. "The rhyme may mean 'Three foot six, and double that besides'—that is, ten feet six in all."
Breathless, despondent, stiff, half dead with fatigue, I dug on till the water was up to the top of my boots; it was of no use.