e
side of a stone-cased chest in the wall, as it were, of which the
stone I had bored was the door, though this was to all appearance
like several other of the larger blocks that the place was built
of.

When I reached downwards my hand could just touch what felt like
rotten canvas, and at that I began to work again at the hole. The
stone was too strong to break, though it seemed thin, and I was so
intent on this, that the voices I had longed to hear made me start.

"He was hereabouts, master, when I last saw him," said one whom I
thought was Spray the smith.

"I will hang you up if he is lost," said Wulfnoth's voice.

Then I sprang up and shouted, and the vault rang painfully in my
ears. It was Olaf who called back to me.

"Ho, Redwald where are you?"

"Under the house, in a pit," I answered, standing under the
opening.

Then someone came tramping above me, and the next moment Spray's
leather-hosed leg came through the hole, and he nearly joined me.
Thereat others laughed, and he climbed up quickly enough, for it
was an ill feeling to be hanging over an unknown depth.

"Lower me down a rope," I said, as I saw his face peering into the
place with some others.

There seemed to be a ladder handy, for the next minute its end came
down, and at once I picked up my sword and climbed out. Olaf stood
in the doorway now with Relf.

"It is easy to see how my cousin got into that place," he said to
Relf, pointing to my helm, which was sorely dinted.

The big thane looked and laughed.

"That is what felled him. But I knew not of this pit," he said,
looking past me into the house where Spray and the men stood round
the hole.

Then the smith said:

"Nor did I, master. But this has been found by the forest men--here
are their tools."

And when we looked, all the floor of the house was broken up, and
the stone paving was piled in corners, and a pick or two lay on
them with a spade and crowbar.

"They have been digging for treasure," said Relf, "and that has
kept them from my house. There are always tales of gold hidden in
these old places. I have seen that they have done the like
elsewhere in the village."

"Aye," said Spray, "they have heard some of our tales, and they
have dug where we would not, for it spoils a house, and the wife's
temper also, to meddle with the good stone floor."

Now it seemed to me that here was a likelihood that there was truth
in the old tales, and that I had lit on the lost hiding