"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 passage, "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 PASSAGE

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, Hayfor