towards the road by which carts
used to come to the gravel-pits. Only Anthea had presence of mind enough
to shout a timid "Good-morning, I hope your whisker will be better
to-morrow," as she ran.

On the road they turned and looked back, and they had to shut their
eyes, and open them very slowly, a little bit at a time, because the
sight was too dazzling for their eyes to be able to bear. It was
something like trying to look at the sun at high noon on Midsummer Day.
For the whole of the sand-pit was full, right up to the very top, with
new shining gold pieces, and all the little bank-martins' little front
doors were covered out of sight. Where the road for carts wound into the
gravel-pit the gold lay in heaps like stones lie by the roadside, and a
great bank of shining gold shelved down from where it lay flat and
smooth between the tall sides of the gravel-pit. And all the gleaming
heaps was minted gold. And on the sides and edges of these countless
coins the mid-day sun shone and sparkled, and glowed and gleamed till
the quarry looked like the mouth of a smelting furnace, or one of the
fairy halls that you see sometimes in the sky at sunset.

The children stood with their mouths open, and no one said a word.

At last Robert stooped and picked up one of the loose coins from the
edge of the heap by the cart-road, and looked at it. He looked on both
sides. Then he said in a low voice, quite different to his own, "It's
not sovereigns."

"It's gold, anyway," said Cyril. And now they all began to talk at once.
They all picked up the golden treasure by handfuls and let it run
through their fingers like water, and the chink it made as it fell was
wonderful music. At first they quite forgot to think of spending the
money, it was so nice to play with. Jane sat down between two heaps of
the gold, and Robert began to bury her, as you bury your father in sand
when you are at the seaside and he has gone to sleep on the beach with
his newspaper over his face. But Jane was not half buried before she
cried out, "Oh stop, it's too heavy! It hurts!"

Robert said "Bosh!" and went on.

"Let me out, I tell you," cried Jane, and was taken out, very white, and
trembling a little.

"You've no idea what it's like," said she; "it's like stones on you--or
like chains."

"Look here," Cyril said, "if this is to do us any good, it's no good our
staying gasping at it like this. Let's fill our pockets and go and buy
things. Don't you forget,