et hardly deep enough to
afford a hiding-place for the bucket, spade, and pickaxe which lay there
on a length of sacking.

"I see!" exclaimed Carrick, as the full light flooded his brain.

"Is that a fact?" inquired the manager twinkling.

"You're going to make a deep hole of it----?"

"No. I'm going to pay you to make it deep for me----"

"And then----"

"At dead o' night; you can take out your sleep by day."

"When Stingaree comes----"

"If he waits till we're ready for him----"

"You touch some lever----"

"And the floor swallows him, as I said, if he waits till we are ready
for him. Everything depends on that--and on your silence. We must take
time. It isn't only the digging of the hole. We need to fix up some
counterpoise to make it shut after a body like a mouse-trap; we must do
the thing thoroughly if we do it at all; and till it's done, not a word
to a soul in the same hemisphere! In the end I suppose I shall have to
tell Donkin, my cashier, and Fowler the clerk. Donkin's a disbeliever
who deserves the name o' Didymus more than ony mon o' my acquaintance.
Fowler would take so kindly to the whole idea that he'd blurt it out
within a week. He may find it out when all's in readiness, but I'll no
tell him even then. See how I trust a brither Scot at sight!"

"I much appreciate it," said Fergus, humbly.

"I wouldna ha' trustit even you, gin I hadna found the delvin' ill worrk
for auld shoulders," pursued Macbean, broadening his speech with
intentional humor. "Noo, wull ye do't or wull ye no?"

The young man's answer was to strip off his coat and spring into the
hole, and to set to work with such energy, yet so quietly, that the
bucket was filled in a few almost silent seconds. Macbean carried it
off, unlocking doors for the nonce, while Fergus remained in the hole to
mop his forehead.

"We need to have another bucket," said the manager, on his return. "I've
thought of every other thing. There's a disused well in the yard, and
down goes every blessed bucket!"

To and fro, over the lip of the closing well, back into the throat of
the deepening hole, went the buckets for many a night; and by day Fergus
Carrick employed his best wits to make an intrinsically anomalous
position appear natural to the world. It was a position which he himself
could thoroughly enjoy; he was largely his own master. He had daily
opportunities of picking up the ways and customs of the bush, and a
nightly excitement which did