Almost every spadeful had been carefully examined for traces of the olden occupation, the doctor during the first portion of the time having been constantly stepping down into the hole and out again to examine some suggestive looking piece of rubbish, until Mark's attention was drawn to Dan, who kept on trying to catch his eye and giving him nods and winks and jerks of the elbow, pointing too again and again at the doctor's back, but all in vain. "What does he mean by all that?" thought the boy. "Oh, bother your dumb motions! Why don't you speak?" "Pst!" whispered Dan. "Can't you see? You tell him. He keeps on a-hindering me, hopping up and down like a cat on hot bricks. You tell him to stop up there and turn over every basketful as they chucks upon the heap." A delicate hint was given to the doctor, and from that time forward he left the little digger room to work. All at once, just as Buck was depositing his empty basket within Dan's reach, and the boys were standing at the edge looking on at where the sailor had begun to scrape away some of the loose crumbs, as he called them, from the side of the bottom of the hole, there was a faint rustling sound and the man dropped his spade, stepped back and bounded out of the excavation as actively as a cat. "What's the matter, mate?" cried Buck, "a arn't given you a nip?" "Wall's not crumbling, is it?" cried Mark excitedly. "No, sir. Did you see it?" "See it? See what?" "Dunno, sir. Thought perhaps you gents up there might have ketched sight of it. Summat alive." "Eh? What's that?" cried the doctor sharply, from where he was poring over the rubbish which the keepers had last deposited on the heap; and he hurried to the edge of the hole. "What have you found?" "Nowt, sir," replied the little sailor. "I was just scraping up the crumbs where there's all the rough stones yonder as I have been leaving so as not to loosen the foundations, when something scuttled along there. Gi' me quite a turn;" and as he spoke there was a sharp _click, click_, from where Sir James sat sentry on the top of the wall. "Humph!" said the doctor. "Mouse or rat." "Mouse or rat, sir?" said Dan sharply. "What, are there them sort of jockeys here?" "Yes, and all the world round, my lad." "Fancy that!" cried the sailor, jumping down into the hole again. "Scar'd me like a great gal, Mr Mark, sir;" and evidently ashamed of having been startled, he bent down to pick up the fallen tool, dislodging as he did so some of the loose rubbish, and bounding backwards to raise the spade and hold it ready to strike as with an axe; for just at the foot of the ancient wall the rustling sound began again, and stopped, leaving Dan in the attitude of striking and the rest of the party leaning over with searching eyes in full expectation of seeing some little animal spring out. "What do you make of that, sir?" said the sailor.