He stepped back and looked at it. It must be one of two things—either the hollow at the top was but a shallow cutting in a great block of stone, or the kist had a false bottom. He sprang at it. Seizing the giant skeleton by the spine, he jerked it out of the kist and dropped it on one side in a bristling bony heap. Just as he did so there came so furious a gust of wind that, buried as they were in the earth, they literally felt the mound rock beneath it. Instantly it was followed by a frightful crash overhead. George collapsed in terror, and for a moment Harold could not for the life of him think what had happened. He ran to the hole and looked up. Straight above him he could see the sky, in which the first cold lights of dawn were quivering. Mrs. Massey’s summer-house had been blown bodily away, and the “ancient British Dwelling Place” was once more open to the sky, as it had been for centuries. “The summer-house has gone, George,” he said. “Thank goodness that we were not in it, or we should have gone too.” “Oh, Lord, sir,” groaned the unhappy George, “this is an awful business. It’s like a judgment.” “It might have been if we had been up above instead of safe down here,” he answered. “Come, bring that other lantern.” George roused himself, and together they bent over the now empty kist, examining it closely. The stone bottom was not of quite the same colour as the walls of the chest, and there was a crack across it. Harold felt in his pocket and drew out his knife, which had at the back of it one of those strong iron hooks that are used to extract stones from the hoofs of horses. This hook he worked into the crack and managed before it broke to pull up a fragment of stone. Then, looking round, he found a long sharp flint among the rubbish where the wall had fallen in. This he inserted in the hole and they both levered away at it. Half of the cracked stone came up a few inches, far enough to allow them to get their fingers underneath it. So it _was_ a false bottom. “Catch hold,” gasped the Colonel, “and pull for your life.” George did as he was bid, and setting their knees against the hollowed stone, they tugged till their muscles cracked. “It’s a-moving,” said George. “Now thin, Colonel.” Next second they both found themselves on the flat of their backs. The stone had given with a run. Up sprang Harold like a kitten. The broken stone was standing edgeways in the kist. There was something soft beneath it. “The light, George,” he said hoarsely. Beneath the stone were some layers of rotten linen. Was it a shroud, or what? They pulled the linen out by handfuls. One! two! three! _Oh, great heaven!_ There, under the linen, were row on row of shining gold coins set edgeways. For a moment everything swam before Harold’s eyes, and his heart stopped beating. As for George, he muttered something inaudible about its being a “master one,” and collapsed.