“Ah! there’s some one about, Mas’r Harry, I’m ’fear’d,” whispered Tom.  “I wish we’d covered the stuff up again.  What do you say to taking a light and going right in?”

Tom’s advice seemed so sensible that we ran back, fetched a candle and the matches, got a light, and then carefully examined the cave, peering wherever it seemed possible for any one to hide.

But our search was in vain, though we penetrated right to the point on the great gulf, and peered into the dark arch.  As far as we could see all was silent, solemn, and grand, and we had nothing to fear from behind us while we worked.

“Well, it’s been a deal of bother, Mas’r Harry; but it’s better than thinking every moment that there’s some one going to jump out on you.”

The mules were quiet as we passed them on our way back, and we then inspected the valley from the spot we called our observatory, but all was still; and hastily seizing a spade, I was once more digging away, Tom casting aside the sand I threw out.

The edge of the spade touched something now every time I thrust it in.  I had but to stoop and force in my fingers to feel the buried object; but moved by that spirit which induces people to examine so carefully the outside of a strange letter, when the interior is at their disposal, I feasted expectancy for a few minutes longer, telling myself that I would carefully clear out all the sand before I tried to ascertain what our treasure might be.

That was an exciting period, and I can picture it all even now:  the great cave, with its vast arch protruding right over the barrier, so that we were toiling in the shadow of the huge vault, filled by day with an ever-deepening golden mellow gloom ­a gloom deepening into blackness in the far depths; the trickling water, fresh from its mysterious source in the great amphitheatre; our splashed and stained figures, toiling together now in the pit we had dug; and the friendly scuffle which took place when, the sand being well cleared out, Tom stooped, but only to be arrested by my hand.

“No,” I exclaimed, “let me, Tom!”

Then, with painfully throbbing heart I bent down, the blood seeming to flush to my head so as to nearly blind me.

The next moment my fingers were groping about amongst the sand and water.

“Be quick, Mas’r Harry, please, or I shall bust!” cried Tom, just as my fingers encountered something hard.

With a cry of joy I rose up, to exhibit to the staring eyes of Tom Bulk a glittering yellow stone.

“Gold, Tom ­gold!” I exclaimed.  “And here’s more and more!”

I stooped down, to bring up two, three, four more lumps of the same glittering yellow stone.

“No, ’tain’t, Mas’r Harry,” said Tom, gruffly, as he turned over one of the fragments in his hand.  “That ain’t gold at all; that’s what they calls mica.  I allers reclect the name, cause it’s the same as one of the prophets we used to read about at school.  You might get plenty of that in the rocks, without much trouble.  It’s just the same stuff as some mates of mine once got out of a gravel pit at home, and they took it to the watchmaker in the town, and they says to him, `What’s that gold worth?’ they says. `Which gold?’ he says. `Why, that,’ they says. `That’s no more gold than you are,’ he says; `that’s mica.’  And then he told them that they might allers tell gold in a moment, by pulling out a knife and trying to cut it, when if it was gold it would cut easy like, just the same as a piece of lead.  Try that, Mas’r Harry.”

Snatching out my knife, I cut at one of the pieces of yellow stone, to find it splinter under the keen edge of my blade.

“I’ll swear, though, that the pynt of that rod hit something else besides them bits of stone, Mas’r Harry.  Try again; or, no ­let me try.”

The disappointment was so keen, that for a few moments I was speechless, and offered no opposition to Tom, who began to grope about with both hands to bring up dozens more pieces of the micaceous rock, and then a piece of flint that seemed to have been chipped into shape, and then a long obsidian blade.

“We’re a-coming to something after all, Mas’r Harry,” said Tom.  “Here’s a cur’osity, and here ­here ­here’s ­pah!  I don’t like handling them.”

As he spoke, Tom held out to my view three or four blackened bones, which he threw down again amongst the sand and water at the bottom.

“We shall come to the leaden coffin after all, Mas’r Harry,” he said.  “This has been a berryin’ place after a fight, p’r’aps; but is it worth while to disturb it?”

I did not answer, for my attention had been taken up by a slight sound towards the interior of the cave.

“Here, quick, Tom!” I exclaimed.

He leaped out in an instant, just as, with a fierce rush, the pent-up water conquered our little dam, took to its old bed, and swept down sand and soil, filling up our pit in a few minutes as it bore all before it, and then subsided quietly into its former course, the sand sucking up the moisture where it had levelled; and to a casual observer the cave seemed as if it had been untouched for ages.

“Well that’s pleasant, certainly,” said Tom coolly; “but ’taint so bad as it might have been.  We haven’t got wet.  Never mind, Mas’r Harry, we’ll have it out again by-and-by.  There’s more in that hole yet than we have seen.  Them bits of yaller stuff weren’t put in for nothing.  But let’s go up again to the prog and have a good feed before we begin again; and, suppose you bring your spade?”

I followed Tom mechanically, spade in hand, to where, behind a mass of rock, we had made our storehouse, and seating ourselves in the gloomy shade I was busily opening my wallet, when Tom, who was getting some maize for the mules, suddenly pressed my shoulder and pointing in the direction of the cave’s mouth, I heard him whisper the one word: 

“Look!”

I looked, with my eyes seeming to be glued to the spot, as slowly there appeared above the rugged line formed by the top of the rocky barrier a human head, another, and another, with intervals of a dozen yards between each; and then they remained motionless, gazing straight forward into the great cavern.