“What is it you are trying to do?” asked Felix, guiding his horse up to the group.
“Aw, I seed his toes a’ sticking out,” cried a plough-boy, eager lest his share of the discovery should be forgotten.
“It wur thuck heavy rain as washed the rubble away,” said a man with a leathern apron, doubtless a blacksmith. Nothing ever happens without a blacksmith being in it.
“Mebbe a rabbit a-scratching, doan’t ee zee?” said the landlord of the inn, leaning on his spade and wiping his forehead; for much ale is a shortener of the breath.
“Well, but what is it, after all—a treasure?”
“Us doan’t ’zactly knaw what it be,” said the man nearest the bank, pausing, after swinging his pickaxe with some effect. “But us means to zee. Jim, shove thuck pole in.”
Jim picked up a long stout ash-pole, and thrust one end, as directed, into a cavity the pickaxe had made under a large sarsen boulder, the earth above which had been previously dug away.
“Zumbody be buried thur, paason,” said the landlord. “Mebbe you knaws un? Thur never wur nar a church here as we heard tell on.”
“Hang on, you chaps!” cried the blacksmith, throwing the weight of his body on the pole. The landlord, the plough-boy, and the tinker did the same; Jim and an aged man on the bank heaved at the great stone from above.
“Peach un up!” (i.e. lever it)