"Well, at first I did not think much about anything" (said Agnes Anne), "except keeping quiet and doing what Duncan did not believe I could do. But I knew the wood. It was not so dark 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 have a chance at this one quick enough!' "'Steady, Dick!' said the first, always in his pleasant tone, 'it can't be far away at the farthest now!' "'Hang it, it may not be there at all. Did you ever hear of a mouldy old castle but had its tale about a secret passage? And did anybody ever see one? Better make the woman speak, I tell you!'