the light of the lanterns was not
strong enough to enable them to make out anything with clearness.

"Well," said George, falling back upon his favourite expression in his
amazement, as he drew his nightcapped head from the hole, "if that
ain't a master one, I niver saw a masterer, that's all.

"What be you a-going to du now, Colonel? Hev you a ladder here?"

"No," answered Harold, "I never thought of that, but I've a good rope:
I'll get it."

Scrambling out of the hole, he presently returned with a long coil of
stout rope. It belonged to some men who had been recently employed in
cutting boughs off such of the oaks that needed attention.

They undid the rope and let the end down to see how deep the pit was.
When they felt that the end lay upon the floor they pulled it up. The
depth from the hole to the bottom of the pit appeared to be about
sixteen feet or a trifle more.

Harold took the iron crow, and having made the rope fast to it fixed
the bar across the mouth of the aperture. Then he doubled the rope,
tied some knots in it, and let it fall into the pit, preparatory to
climbing down it.

But George was too quick for him. Forgetting his doubts as to the
wisdom of groping about Dead Man's Mount at night, in the ardour of
his burning curiosity he took the dark lantern, and holding it with
his teeth passed his body through the hole in the masonry, and
cautiously slid down the rope.

"Are you all right?" asked Harold in a voice tremulous with
excitement, for was not his life's fortune trembling on the turn?

"Yes," answered George doubtfully. Harold looking down could see that
he was holding the lantern above his head and staring at something
very hard.

Next moment a howl of terror echoed up from the pit, the lantern was
dropped upon the ground and the rope began to be agitated with the
utmost violence.

In another two seconds George's red nightcap appeared followed by a
face that was literally livid with terror.

"Let me up for Goad's sake," he gasped, "or he'll hev me by the leg!"

"He! who?" asked the Colonel, not without a thrill of superstitious
fear, as he dragged the panting man through the hole.

But George would give no answer until he was out of the grave. Indeed
had it not been for the Colonel's eager entreaties, backed to some
extent by actual force, he would by this time have been out of the
summer-house also, and half-way down the mount.

"What is it?" roared the Colonel in the pit to G