"We've had a famous adventure to tell Mother," said Hugh.
"Yes," I said; "but we had better be careful not to tell anybody else. I wonder what they do here in this hut; I suppose they hide their things here till it's safe to take them away."
"Where do they take them?" asked Hugh.
"Away into Dartmoor," I said. "And there there are wonderful places, so old Evans the postboy told me."
"What sort of places?" asked Hugh.
"Oh, caves covered over with gorse and fern, and old copper and tin mines, which were worked by the ancient Britons. They go under the ground for miles, so old Evans told me, with passages, and steps up and down, and great big rooms cut in the rock. And then there are bogs where you can sink things till it's quite safe to take them up. The bog-water keeps them quite sound; it doesn't rot them like ordinary water. Sometimes men fall into the bogs, and the marsh-mud closes over them. That's the sort of place Dartmoor is."
Hugh was very much interested in all this, but he was a quiet boy, not fond of talking. "Yes," he said; "but where do the things go afterwards—who takes them?"
"Nobody knows, so old Evans said," I answered; "but they go, they get taken. People come at night and carry them to the towns, little by little, and from the market towns, they get to the cities, no one knows how. I dare say this hut has been full of things—valuable lace and silk, and all sorts of wines and spirits—waiting for some one to carry them into the moor."
"Hush!" said Hugh; "there's some one calling—it's Mother."
Outside the gorse-clump, at some little distance from us, we heard Mrs Cottier and my aunt calling "Hugh!" and "Jim!" repeatedly. We lay very still wondering what they would think, and hoping that they would make no search for us. They could have tracked us in the snow quite easily, but we knew very well they would never think of it, for they were both shortsighted and ignorant of what the Red Indians do when they go tracking. To our surprise their voices came nearer and nearer, till they were at the edge of the clump, but on the side opposite to that in which the rabbit-run opened. I whispered to Hugh to be quiet as they stopped to call us. They lingered for several minutes, calling every now and then, and talking to each other in between whiles. We could hear every word of their conversation.