“Well, that would be much better than for people to say Rees Pennant left his friend to die alone.” This sort of romantic outburst became Rees, because a little Welsh rhodomontade was natural to him; and, indeed, he was physically brave enough. Sep took his hand affectionately. “Now, Rees,” said he, “we must get away, and never come near this villainous pest-hole again.” Rees pushed his friend’s hand away like an impatient boy. “You need not come again,” he said. “But I shall come here again and again, and go down that hole again and again, until I find what it leads to, and whether there is anything in it worth finding.” He spoke with dogged obstinacy, but indeed after the evening’s adventures, and the cold awakening from that dream of gold which turned at the touch, there only remained to him the embers of hope and sullen persistency in carrying this project through to the end. “Oh, well, then, of course if you come, I shall,” said Sep, in his little chirpy voice. “We’ll come, and come as long as you like, till we both find a fool’s grave down there.” Rees did not answer. He was busy replacing the grating over the hole, and covering it up as before. Then they walked in silence, still suffering from a sort of lightness in the head, out into the open air, and climbed up to the spot on the wall where Sep had been drawn up. By the same means he was now let down again very silently, by the watery light of a moon that was battling not very successfully with the clouds. Then Rees walked out by the gate, as he could do without summoning Mrs. Crow, and rejoined the other two men under the castle wall. Amos Goodhare was in a state of much excitement, and professed great enthusiasm over the devotion which each of the young men had displayed towards the other. “It is such hazardous enterprises as these,” he said warmly, “which bring out in their brightest colors the qualities of young men.” “Yes, and of older ones too,” assented Sep, in his best fool’s manner, which the librarian did not yet understand. Goodhare heartily applauded Rees’s determination to go through with the adventure, but declined the offer that he should share the dangers of the next descent with a good-humored laugh. “I am too old,” he said. “My limbs are too stiff for such doings. What would have become of me if I had been in the place of either of you? If in Sep Jocelyn’s, I should have been too heavy for you to lift; if in yours, I should not have been active enough to get him out in time. No, I must take the humbler part of watcher, and be content therefore with such share of the spoils--if there are to be any spoils--as you think due to my initiative.”