This was good enough to hear, and, in its way, comforting. But, somehow, at such a time the mind craves for proofs more absolute. Or to be somewhere else. Particularly the latter.
I think Mr. Ablethorpe saw something of my dismay on my face, for immediately he stopped what he was doing, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, "Joe, would I send you into any danger I would not be ready to share myself?"
"No, I believe not, sir!" said I. For though he worried me like fun about being the right sort of Churchman, he was a rare good sort himself, man and Churchman, too. At least I know about the first, and as for the Churchman, I am willing to take that on trust.
"Well, now," said he, "that"s settled. In you go!"
"But what am I to do when I get in there?" I asked. For I had thought that he was going to give me a proper explanation of everything--the whys and the wherefores, and all about it.
"You are to crawl, Joe," he said, "because you can get in and I cannot, Joseph! That"s the worst of going in for athletics at school, Joe--it makes you grow such a whopping size afterwards when you stop them. So you are to crawl up there for me, and as soon as you find anything, you are to give the rope a tug, and I will pull you out! For it isn"t so easy as it looks to crawl backward down a hole of that size."
"But suppose," I faltered, my imagination rampant, and my voice failing me at the same moment, "suppose--that I should come on--on poor Harry Foster--with--with his throat cut--oh, what should I do?"
"You won"t--more"s the pity," he answered, quite coolly. "If Harry had been in there, and you and I sitting here, we should have known it long ere this. No such luck! Still, what you may _find_, is quite worth the trial. We shall at least learn something!"
Now I don"t think that, since the visit Elsie and I paid to Deep Moat Grange, I was quite so eager to "learn something" as I had been. But it was no use being a coward with the Hayfork Minister.
"In you go, Joe," he said, lowering me by the rope to the black mouth of the pa.s.sage, "in with you, eel! And if you find anything portable, gave a tug, and if you want to come out _very_ suddenly, give two tugs."
I was halfway in as he said these words, and I instantly gave two tugs, but he only said, "Now, no monkey tricks, Joe. This is serious. Up with you. Remember I am here!"
I was not at all likely to forget it. But I had much rather he had been head foremost up that narrow tunnel, and I out in the green aisles of the forest waiting for him with a rope in my hands.
CHAPTER XII
THE BRICKED Pa.s.sAGE
Now I don"t know whether you have ever been up a drain pipe which just takes you, and no more. I suppose you have--in nightmares, after supping on cold boiled pork and greens, or some nice little digestible morsel like that. But really awake, and with the birds singing on the trees, the winds lightly scented with bog myrtle and pine and bracken breathing all about you--to be told to shove yourself up a built rabbit hole, not knowing what you may come on the next time you put out your hand!--Well, Hayfork Minister or no Hayfork--I had the hardest row to hoe that time! I don"t think any fellow, even if he has climbed all the mountains that are, has any right to let a boy in for a thing like that without telling him beforehand. And smiling about it all the time, as if he were merely sending you into Miss Payne"s to buy b.u.t.ter-scotch!
I felt as if I could have killed him the first half-dozen "creeps" I took. And what was the worst of his cheek, he shoved me behind with the oak branch, which he had sharpened, and said, "Go on!"
If I could have got him then--up a drain--me with that same oak goad, I would have given it to him--cheerful, I would. Cheerful is no name for it!
Inside the tunnel the bricks were not all of the same size. Some had dropped a little and pinched my shoulders. Some were wanting altogether. And that fiend of a Hayfork, at the mouth, all safe outside with the rope"s-end in his hand kept singing up to me, "A-a-all right--a-a-right--it will get wider as you get farther in!"
Much he knew! Had he been up, I"d like to know?
However, he was right as it happened--right without knowing anything about it. The pa.s.sage did widen a bit. I found offshoots--smaller pa.s.sages leading I don"t know where. And I didn"t put in my hand to feel, having a dislike to be bitten by water rats--or any other kind of rats. And it was an awful "ratty" place that, by the smell of it.
Also, for all that Mr. Ablethorpe said, I was in mortal fear of coming across poor Harry"s leg, or of Mad Jeremy arriving and "settling" Mr.
Ablethorpe, without my knowing anything about it. And when I came out--I should find myself face to face with the oily curls, the sneering lip, and--specially, with the knife I had seen gleaming in his teeth when he swam the Moat to make an end of Elsie and me.
I wasn"t frightened, of course. Only I just thought what a fool I was to be there. I am not the first, nor will I be the last to think the same thing--when, like me, they are doing something dreadful n.o.ble and heroic.
There were curious side pa.s.sages, as I say, on each side of the tunnel along which I was crawling--oh, so slowly. Some of these were narrow and smooth, where a brick had fallen out, and smelled "rat" yards off.
I did not meddle with these. But there were bigger offshoots, too, properly bricked round and as tight as ninepence--no rats there.
Well, it was in one of these that I came on my first treasure-trove. I felt a lot of things all tied together in a rough bag or cloth--heavy, too, and of course all clammy with moisture or mould or something like that. No wonder--I felt all green-mouldy myself, after only a minute or two.
I tugged at the rope, and, almost before I knew it, I was out again in the dancing speckle of the sunshine sifted through the leaves. Blinded by the sudden glare which sent blobs of colour dancing across my eyeb.a.l.l.s, as if I had looked at the sun, I did not realize for a moment that I had brought anything with me.
"Let go!" I heard Mr. Ablethorpe say, and I was quite unconscious what I was holding on to. Yet what I had found was little enough to the eye--a piece of rough sacking, roughly sewn about a quant.i.ty of metallic objects which jingled as Mr. Ablethorpe cut the outer covering open with his big "gully" knife.
"Money!" the thought came natural to a boy; "have I disinterred a treasure?"
And for the moment I was all ready to go back again to look for more.
But the blade went on cutting, and presently the contents tinkled out upon the bank--about a dozen and a half of copper rings, rather thick, and each made with a hook at the bottom. I could not imagine what they were for.
But Mr. Ablethorpe bounded upon them, examining each one before putting it in his pocket. Lastly he looked at the piece of canvas in which they had been wrapped, long and carefully.
"Ah!" he said, "that, I think, will do!"
And he closed the iron sliding door carefully, as it had been before, and thrusting his fingers into the shallow pool, he lifted up double handfuls of oozy mud and plastered it all over the entrance.
"When that is dry," he said, "it will take a clever man to tell where you have poked your nose this afternoon, Joseph!"
This seemed likely enough and satisfactory, from his point of view.
But, as for me, I wanted very much to be told what it was all about.
So I asked him what it was I had found, and why he wanted me to crawl up there, at any rate.
"You found some copper rings and a piece of dirty canvas," he said, "neither more nor less. And I asked you to go up there because I was too fat to go myself. Were you nearly at the end, think you?"
I told him no--that the pa.s.sage seemed to widen as it went farther on.
I think that at these words he was nearly replacing the rope, which he had begun to coil, round my waist again.
But he looked at his watch, and shook his head.
"We have not the time to do it safely," he said; "but--let us see--if it widens as you say, Joseph, it is very likely that it has another opening."
He took a small plan out of his pocket, a tiny little measuring scale, nodded once or twice, and then began slowly to pace through the wood at right angles to the course of the Backwater.
All at once he dropped to the ground as if shot. I judged it best to efface myself, too, and that promptly. So I crawled behind a big pine tree, about whose roots the male ferns were growing tall, and, putting their thick scaly stems aside with my hand, I lay watching the heels of the boots which Mr. Ablethorpe wore.
He kept quite still, apparently intent upon something I could not see.
Now, of course (you will not have noticed it), but I am very curious about things that don"t concern me in the least--not to talk about, you understand, but just to _know_. So, as the ferns grew pretty continuously, and the pines held close together, shooting their indigo-blue umbrellas into the sky, I wriggled along till I could lay my hand on one of the minister"s boot heels.
It was a foolish thing to do, for it nearly made him cry out. I saw him set his teeth to shut in the sound. He had a nerve, the Hayfork Minister, but I could see from his look that he would give it to me after for coming on him like that. However, it was some fun to see him in a funk.
And, indeed, with reason! For not more than a dozen yards down the slope, between us and the wall of the old orchard, I saw Mad Jeremy, on his knees, digging with his fingers, eager as a terrier at a rat hole.
Then I called to mind the mysterious crime of which Miss Aphra had found him guilty, and her stern accusation, "You"ve been digging again!" the day Elsie and I were at the Grange. Last of all, his repeated denial, his attempts to rub off the earth pellets, his sentence, tears, and punishment. Yes, I saw him digging with his fingers just as his sister had said.
Jiminy, how I wished I was at home!