“Where would you look?” asked Ben.
The mariner reflected. “Well, if I was hiding a treasure I’d put it where I could get it if I wanted it in a hurry. Seems to me I’d pick out a place in the chimney-breast. I’ve heard of folks hiding things in places like that.”
“Seems to me we’ve got to pull the house down,” said David. “And then like as not we wouldn’t find it.”
“Might be so,” the mariner agreed. “It don’t pay to take too much trouble hunting for things like that. But some people just have to.”
The four embarked in the Argo. “Ben’s one of the people that just have to,” said David. “I guess he’ll pull the house down.”
“I hadn’t thought of the chimney-breast,” said Ben. “We’d better look there to-morrow.”
“Go to it, Tige,” laughed David. “We’ll get out the pick-ax and crow-bar.”
XVII—PETER COTTERELL
Next morning the four campers, following the suggestion made by the sea-captain on the Barmouth wharf, resumed their search for the Cotterell treasure. David treated the whole matter as a joke; he thought that either the story about Sir Peter having hidden his silver plate was a legend without any foundation in fact, or that one of the family had found the treasure and disposed of it. Tom leaned to the same opinion, although he did not say so as openly as did David, perhaps because he saw that both John Tuckerman and Ben thought the treasure was yet to be found. Ben was still as positive as ever, and argued that if Sir Peter’s plate had ever been discovered that fact would certainly have been mentioned in Crusty Christopher’s notebooks.
They examined the chimney-breast in the kitchen and dining-room, looking for any possible hiding-place. They went all over the house again, looking for any secret door or panel that they might have missed before. They tapped the walls and they measured them; but nowhere could they figure out such a place as they were hunting. Finally Tuckerman said, “I don’t see how we can search anywhere else, unless we do as Dave suggested—pull the house down—and I don’t want to do that.”