After digging down about a foot he came upon a small, old, courier-bag, which he lifted out, and which contained something heavy. The bag had been all rubbed over with grease and to the grease the dark sand stuck thickly. Out of this bag he took a small, heavy, cylindrical bundle of chamois leather. Then he restored the bag to the hole, shovelled back the sand and smoothed the floor, rose and stood a minute hearkening, with the cylinder of chamois rolled-up leather in his hand. This hiding-place had been selected and contrived with great acuteness. It was so close to the foot of the shutters that no one looking in through the ventilators at any angle could catch sight of it. The presence of the moulder's sand at the threshold was explained by the fact that no other substance was so good for canting heavy metal objects upon. Superficial disturbances were to be expected in such a floor, and it was impossible to tell superficial disturbances from deep ones. Once the sand was re-levelled with a broom-handle, used as a striker is used in measuring corn, it was impossible to guess whether any disturbance had recently taken place. In concealing and recovering anything here the operator's ear was within two inches of the street, and he could hear the faintest sound outside. The threshold was not a likely place to challenge examination in case of search. Timmons now walked softly over his noiseless floor, carrying his lantern in one hand and the roll of leather in the other, until he got behind the old boiler of the donkey engine. Here he slid back the slide of the lantern and unrolled the leather. The latter proved to be a belt about a palm deep, and consisting of little bags or pockets of chamois leather, clumsily but securely sewn to a band of double chamois. There were a dozen of those little pockets in all; six of them contained some heavy substance. Each one closed with a piece of string tied at the mouth. Timmons undid one and rolled out on his hand a thick lump of yellow metal about the size of the large buttons worn as ornaments on the coats of coachmen. It was not, however, flat, but slightly convex at one side and almost semi-spherical on the other. He smiled a well-satisfied smile at the gold ingot, and weighed it affectionately in his black, grimy palm, where the gold shone like a yellow unchanging flame. Timmons gave the ingot a loving polish with his sleeve, dropped it back into its bag, and re-tied the string. Then out of each of his trousers' pockets he took a similar ingot or button, weighed each, and looked at each with affectionate approval, and secured each in one of the half-dozen vacant leather bags.