Richard awoke. In a fraction of a second he was wide awake, alert, eager, excited. He saw the car vanishing towards the outbuildings of Queen’s Farm. Springing out of the hedge, he clambered over the opposite hedge into Craig’s orchard, crossed it, passed the house by its north side, and so came to the quadrangle of outbuildings. By keeping on the exterior of this quadrangle he arrived at last, skirting the walls, at the blind end of the boreen. He peeped cautiously round the angle of the wall, scarcely allowing even the tip of his nose to protrude, and discerned the empty motor-car. He ventured forward into the boreen. It was at this corner of the quadrangle that the locked shed was situated. Rather high up in the wall a light disclosed the presence of a small window. The faintness of the light proved that the window must be extremely dirty. But even if it had been clean he could not have utilized it, for it was seven feet from the earth. He put his hand on the wall and touched a spout. The spout felt rickety, but he climbed up it, and, clinging partly to the spout and partly to the frame of the window, he looked into the locked shed. It had once, he perceived, been used as a stable, but it was being put to other purposes now. The manger was heaped up with bright silver coins. In the middle of the floor stood a large iron receptacle of peculiar shape. He guessed that it had been constructed to fit into the well of the Panhard motor-car. By means of two small buckets Teresa and her father were transferring the contents of this receptacle, which was still half full of silver, into the manger. The shed was ‘lighted by a single candle stuck insecurely on what had once been a partition between two stalls. The candle flickered and cast strange shadows. The upper part of the chamber was in darkness. Looking straight across it, Richard saw another little window exactly opposite his own; and through this window he discerned another watching face. ‘Micky!’ he exclaimed softly to himself. Raphael and Teresa were, then, doubly spied upon. But who was Micky? Richard’s attention was diverted from this interesting inquiry by the gradual growth of a light near the door, of which, being parallel with his window, he had no view. Then a long, licking flame appeared. He could see it creeping across the floor, nearer and nearer to the unconscious heavers of silver. Raphael had turned on the waste tap of the exhaust petrol under the motor-car. The highly combustible quid had run beneath the door of the shed it had there come in contact with the ax match used by Raphael to light the candle and then thrown down. Richard saw next that the door of the shed was on fire; at the same moment, unable any longer to keep his grip on the spout and the window-frame, he fell unexpectedly to the ground. CHAPTER VI--THE DESIRE FOR SILVER