place
had a spectral look about it, and he could not help thinking of the
evil reputation it had borne for all those ages. There was scarcely a
man in Honham, or in Boisingham either, who could have been persuaded
to stay half an hour by himself on Dead Man's Mount after the sun was
well down. Harold had at different times asked one or two of them what
they saw to be afraid of, and they had answered that it was not what
they saw so much as what they felt. He had laughed at the time, but
now he admitted to himself that he was anything but comfortable,
though if he had been obliged to put his feelings into words he could
probably not have described them better than by saying that he had a
general impression of somebody being behind him.

However, he was not going to be frightened by this nonsense, so
consigning all superstitions to their father the Devil, he marched on
boldly and unlocked the summer-house door. Now, though this curious
edifice had been designed for a summer-house, and for that purpose
lined throughout with encaustic tiles, nobody as a matter of fact had
ever dreamed of using it to sit in. To begin with, it roofed over a
great depression some thirty feet or more in diameter, for the top of
the mount was hollowed out like one of those wooden cups in which
jugglers catch balls. But notwithstanding all the encaustic tiles in
the world, damp will gather in a hollow like this, and the damp alone
was an objection. The real fact was, however, that the spot had an
evil reputation, and even those who were sufficiently well educated to
know the folly of this sort of thing would not willingly have gone
there for purposes of enjoyment. So it had suffered the general fate
of disused places, having fallen more or less out of repair and become
a receptacle for garden tools, broken cucumber frames and lumber of
various sorts.

Harold pushed the door open and entered, shutting it behind him. It
was, if anything, more disagreeable in the empty silence of the wide
place than it had been outside, for the space roofed over was
considerable, and the question at once arose in his mind, what was he
to do now that he had got there? If the treasure was there at all,
probably it was deep down in the bowels of the great mound. Well, as
he was on the spot, he thought that he might as well try to dig,
though probably nothing would come of it. In the corner were a pickaxe
and some spades and shovels. Harold got them, advanced to the