WHAT THE EARTH GAVE UP
Tom’s account of the way in which the powderkeg was entangled in the roots of the catalpa tree was more than borne out by the fact as the boys found it. It seemed to them a wonder that Tom had discovered it at all, so completely was it wrapped up in the knotted mass of root growths.
After digging away the earth until the whole root entanglement was exposed to view, the boys set Dick Wentworth at work cutting away the roots with his jackknife, a thing at which only one person could work at a time. When Dick’s hand grew tired, another of the boys relieved him at the task and the work was hurried as much as possible, not so much because it was growing late as because the little company’s curiosity was intense.
“Wonder how on earth anybody ever got the thing under the roots of a tree that way?” ventured Tom, as he toiled with his knife.
“Simple enough,” answered Cal. “He didn’t do it.”
“How did it get there, then?”
“Why, the tree grew there after the keg was buried, of course. Somebody stuck a catalpa bean in the ground directly over the keg. Probably the man who buried the thing did that; he wanted to provide a landmark by which to find the spot again, and probably he knew there wasn’t another catalpa tree on all Quasi plantation.”
“But that tree has been standing here a long time—twenty or twenty-five years I should say.”
“That only means that the keg was buried here twenty or twenty-five years ago at the least, and ’pon my word, it looks it.”