For all his assurances, however, she could not make up her mind to go, nor this day could she even keep the story from her husband, for it weighed upon her mind. When he heard the story he said, ‘I’ll go with you.’
‘Ah! if you’ll go, then I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘But how will it be? The friar was so particular that I should tell no one, evil may happen if I take another with me.’
‘If there is nothing in the story, there’s nothing to fear,’ said the husband; ‘and, if the story is true, there is a heap of money to reward one for a little fear; so let’s go. Besides, if you think any harm will happen to you for taking me, I can stand on the top of the bank while you go down to the hole, and it can’t be said properly that I’m there, while I shall yet be by to give you courage and help you if anything happens.’
‘That way, I don’t mind it,’ answered the wife; and they went out together to the place, the husband, as he had said, standing by on a bank, and the wife creeping down into a hole. They took also two donkeys with them to bring away the treasure.
At the first stroke of the woman’s spade there came such lugubrious cries that she was frightened into running away.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ said the husband; ‘cries don’t hurt!’ So the woman began digging again, and then there came out cries again worse than before, and the noise of rattling of chains, dreadful to hear. So terrified was the woman that she swooned away.
The husband then went down into the hole with what water he could find to bring her to herself, but the moment he got into the hole the spirits set upon him and beat him so that he had great livid marks all over.
After that neither of them had the heart to go back to try it again.
But the woman was in the habit of going to confession to one of the Augustinian fathers, and she told him all. The fathers sent and had the place dug up all about, and thought they had proved there was nothing there; but for all that, it generally happens that when a thing like that has to be done, it must be done by the person who is sent, and anybody else but that person trying it proves nothing at all.
One thing is certain, that when those horrid assassins[5] hide a heap of money they put a dead man’s body at the entrance of the hole where they hide it, and say to it, ‘Thou be on guard till one of such a name, be it Teresa, be it Angela, be it Pietro, comes;’ and no one else going can be of any use, for it may be a hundred years before the coincidence can happen of a person just of the right name lighting on the spot—perhaps never.