k 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
butter-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 passage did widen a bit. I found offshoots--smaller
passages 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 noble and
heroic.

There were curious side passages, 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.