“Solid rock,” says he.
We were then taken through another secret passage which connected the hidden room with the old cement tunnel. Here we found a second iron door, the complexion of which was so much like the solid rock on either side of it that it had completely escaped us. But, to that point, even if we had been wise to the fact that it was there I doubt if we could have spotted it.
“Who do you suppose built all these passages,” puzzled Poppy. “The old pirate, himself?”
“If he did,” I put in, “he must have been some worker.”
“Grandpa Weir didn’t tell us all the particulars,” says Tom. “But it’s Uncle Abner’s opinion that the early miners, whoever they were, tapped the cellar of the stone house by accident. They couldn’t have been skilled miners, Uncle Abner says, for a shaft is never properly made from the bottom up. Later the fake chimney base, with its secret door, was built over the hole in the cellar floor. And as this all favored my great-uncle’s crooked scheme, it may be that the queer mining was done under his orders.”
At four o’clock we hit the hay, Poppy and I sharing one bed and Tom and his uncle the other. But before turning in we double-locked the cellar door, further rigging up a “tin-pan” burglar alarm. But nothing woke us up.
Mrs. O’Mally, as usual, had to pile out early to start her pickers to work, but she moved quietly in and out of the house, so the rest of us didn’t uncover our eyes until ten o’clock.
“Well,” says I, yawning, “what’s the program for to-day?”
“Cucumbers,” says Poppy, reaching for his pants.
“Gold?” I further exercised my jaws, as I thought of our recent adventures.