Hesitating no longer, and dismissing from his mind the silly ghost-stories that had been handed down in the family, from old times, he knelt and tore up the strip of straw matting that covered the spot at which the blows seemed to be directed; at the same time knocking back, in answer.
“It may be some of the boys’ fun,” he said to himself, “but it won’t do to run any risks.”
The straw matting being removed, there appeared a square, dimly marked out in the flooring, by the edges of boards which had apparently been let in, long after the neighboring portions.
“The old trap-door!”
Mr. Percival recognized the place instantly; at the same time he was puzzled to know how to act. For the door had long ago been removed, and these short sections of planks nailed down in its place.
“Hold on!” he shouted. “I’ll be back in a minute!”
Very nimbly, for a man of his years, he hurried out of the room, and presently returned with tools—an axe, a large, heavy chisel, a saw, and a kind of sharp-pointed hammer, like an ice-pick. With the aid of these, he soon had the end of one board, then another, pried up. It must be confessed that he was startled by the apparition that emerged from the opening thus effected. Could that be Tom! A face, deadly white, but streaked with perspiration and dust, and bleeding from a bruise on the forehead; clothes, hands, every part of him, covered with dirt; eyes half-blinded by the sudden light, form trembling from head to foot; it was altogether a strange figure to come up through uncle Will’s floor—but Tom it was, beyond a doubt.
“O uncle Will,” he sobbed brokenly, the tears running over his mud-stained cheeks, “I’m so sorry. Here’s the watch!”
And to Mr. Percival’s utter bewilderment, the boy laid Pet’s little watch in his hands, safe and whole.