be. I'll
tell you the proper answer to that--Never."

"Oh, indeed," said Vince: "then how about the caves in under here?
Haven't they all been hollowed out, and aren't they always getting
bigger? That's how those on the other side must have been made. I
shouldn't wonder if they are full of water now."

"What, with all those things in!" said Mike, in alarm. "Oh, I don't
believe that. When shall we go and see?"

"It would be horrible to go across the common on a day like this, and we
should be soaked getting through the ferns and brambles."

"Yes; it wouldn't be nice now. But will you come first fine afternoon?"

"Well, I don't know."

"Oh, I say," cried Mike reproachfully--"you are getting to be a fellow!
You thought the caves grand at first."

"So I did, when we could go there and fish, and cook our tea, and eat
it, and enjoy ourselves like Robinson Crusoe; but when it comes to
finding the other cave and all that stuff there, it makes one
uncomfortable like, and I don't care so much about going."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I can't explain it, but it seems queer, and as if we
ought to tell my father or yours. I felt like you do at first, and it
seemed as if we'd found a treasure and were going to be very rich."

"So we have, and so we are," said Mike. "I don't see why you should
turn cowardly about it."

"I didn't know that it was cowardly to want to be honest," said Vince
quietly.

"Only hark at him!" cried Mike, as the waves came thundering in, and the
wind roared over them. "You are the most obstinate chap that ever was.
Why won't you see things in the right light? Don't those things belong
to my father?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do. If they were brought and hidden there a hundred years
ago, and everybody who brought 'em is dead, as they're on father's land,
mustn't they be his?"

"Or the king's."

"The king don't want them, I know. By rights they're my father's, but
he won't mind our doing what we like with them, as we were the finders.
Now then, don't be snobby; will you come first fine afternoon?"

Vince was silent.

"I won't ask you to meddle with anything--only to keep it all quiet."

Vince picked up a stone and threw it from him, so that it should fall
down into the raging billows below, but he made no reply.

"I say, why don't you speak?" cried Mike.

"Who's to talk here in this noise, with the wind blowing your words
away?"

"You could just as easily have said you wo