Gray ground his teeth with helpless rage, but he got up and took the pick from his knapsack. It was a small slender tool, but very strong. Clay looked at it approvingly.
"Now, you dig up that hearth-stone, mate, and you'll see what you'll see."
"The hearth-stone?"
"You do what I tell you," returned Lumley with a nod. "You go and dig up that hearth-stone."
Gray flung down the pick.
"I won't do anything of the sort. I won't stand any more of this sort of treatment. You may shoot me if you like"—for Lumley had raised his revolver—"but do your bidding I won't."
Gray fully expected, even half-wished for, a shot from the revolver Lumley held up at him for a moment. But the convict changed his mind. He put the weapon in his pocket and got coolly up.
"Well, if you won't I must," he said, and went over to the hearth-stone that lay buried under a heap of earth and timber.
Gray sank down on the fallen rafter and buried his face in his hands. No man can look on death and bear an unchanged front, not even the bravest and the most prepared, and Gray was not of these. For a brief moment he had believed that death was close to him. It was to Lumley's interest to kill him now that he knew where the gold was, and there had been murder in his eyes as he had looked across at Gray. And Gray sat with his hands clasped over his eyes, in sick, horrible fear at the thought of himself lying cold and stiff, with eyes staring blindly up at the sky; his soul gone—where?
At the other end of the hut Clay was busy. He dashed away the heap of rubbish on the hearth-stone, and digging the pick into the loose earth round it, dragged it up without much difficulty. A cry of exultation broke from him as he did so. Embedded in the ground below the hearth-stone lay a small tin box, bound round and round with whipcord. To drag up the box, cut the already decaying cord, and wrench open the cover was the work of a moment. Two or three wrappings of thick brown paper lay over the contents of the box. He tore these off, and clutched at what lay beneath.