“Why, it seemed so rum for us to have slipped down here again, pretending to fish, so as to be laughed at because we hadn’t caught any, and for you to turn yourself upside down, with your head in the hole, and your legs up in the air, shouting like that!”

“Don’t be a donkey, Samson.”

“No, Master Fred; I’ll promise you that, faithful like; but it do seem rum. ’Tarn’t likely, you know, sir, ’tarn’t likely.”

“What isn’t likely?”

“Why, that aren’t, sir. Even if Master Scar is hiding there.”

“If? He must be. Nobody else knows of the existence of the place.”

“Wouldn’t our Nat, sir?”

“No. How could he?”

“Well, sir, I can’t say how he could; but he always was a nasty hunting-up-things sort of boy. So sure as I hid anything in my box at home, or anywhere else, he’d never rest till he found it; and as he was hiding away here, he may have hunted out this hole, and took possession like a badger.”

“It might be so,” said Fred, thoughtfully; and he approached the hole once more.