rk as one would think, and once out
of the echo of the house walls I could hear far better. I leaned against
a larch, holding on to the trunk and counting the sticky rosettes on its
trailers to keep me from thinking while I listened. Twice I thought I
had made out exactly from which direction the sound came, and twice I
found I was mistaken. But the third time I followed the ditch under the
sunk fence till I came to the mound which is shaped like a green hat at
the end next the house. The thudding came from there--I was sure of it.
When I could hear men talking, I was (and I am not saying it to put
Duncan in the wrong) more glad than afraid.

"The bottom of the ditch was full of all sorts of underbrush--hazel and
birch roots mostly--growing pretty close as I found when once I got
there, but rustling horribly while I was getting settled. However, there
was nothing for it, if I wanted to find out anything, but to go on. So
on I went. I was close to the mound now, and could hear the voices.

"'Quiet there a moment!' said some one, 'I'll swear I heard a noise in
the ditch!'

"And as I crouched something like a blade of a sword or maybe a pike
came high above me stabbing this way and that. Twigs and leaves pattered
down, but I was safe behind the stump of a fallen tree. Presently the
steel thing I had seen glinting struck the dead and sodden wood of the
tree-trunk, and snapped with a sharp tang like a fiddle-string--a
hayfork it may have been, or one of the long thin swords such as are
hung up in the hall.

"But another and deeper voice--like that of a man somewhat out of
breath, said gruffly, 'Better get the job done! 'Tis only a fox or a
rabbit--what else would be out here at this hour?'

"And then, with the noise of spitting on the hands, the sound of the
heavy tool began again. It had a ring in it like steel on stone. I think
they had been chopping something with a pickaxe and had got through. For
now the clink was quite different, though that again might be because I
was nearer.

"'Have you found the passage? Surely it is long in showing?'

"That was the first voice again, the better educated one, I take it. He
spoke like a gentleman, like the General or even the Doctor himself,
though there was much rudeness in the voice of the other when he
answered him.

"'D'ye think I am breaking my back over this stone-door for fun?'
growled the man in panting gasps. 'If I imagined you were any hand at a
tool, you should