Reaching the summer house in safety, they entered, and the Colonel shut and locked the door behind them. The frail building was literally rocking in the fury of the storm.
“I hope the roof will hold,” shouted George, but Harold took no heed. He was thinking of other things. They lit the lanterns, of which they now had three, and the Colonel slid down into the great grave he had so industriously dug, motioning to George to follow. This that worthy did, not without trepidation. Then they both knelt and stared down through the hole in the masonry, but the light of the lanterns was not strong enough to enable them to make out anything with clearness.
“Well,” said George, falling back upon his favourite expression in his amazement, as he drew his nightcapped head from the hole, “if that ain’t a master one, I niver saw a masterer, that’s all.
“What be you a-going to du now, Colonel? Hev you a ladder here?”
“No,” answered Harold, “I never thought of that, but I’ve a good rope: I’ll get it.”
Scrambling out of the hole, he presently returned with a long coil of stout rope. It belonged to some men who had been recently employed in cutting boughs off such of the oaks that needed attention.
They undid the rope and let the end down to see how deep the pit was. When they felt that the end lay upon the floor they pulled it up. The depth from the hole to the bottom of the pit appeared to be about sixteen feet or a trifle more.
Harold took the iron crow, and having made the rope fast to it fixed the bar across the mouth of the aperture. Then he doubled the rope, tied some knots in it, and let it fall into the pit, preparatory to climbing down it.
But George was too quick for him. Forgetting his doubts as to the wisdom of groping about Dead Man’s Mount at night, in the ardour of his burning curiosity he took the dark lantern, and holding it with his teeth passed his body through the hole in the masonry, and cautiously slid down the rope.
“Are you all right?” asked Harold in a voice tremulous with excitement, for was not his life’s fortune trembling on the turn?