No man, Rees supposed, could have carried more than one of those chests at a time. Small as they were, not more than twelve inches high, by ten wide, and eight deep, the weight of each when full of gold must have been great. Lord Hugh must have brought them down from the castle one by one when he resolved to try to escape by risking the unknown dangers of the disused subterranean passage. Rees pictured to himself that he must then have found his way to the other entrance, and either finding the stone impossible to raise, or discovering that he was in the midst of the Puritan camp, he had crept back, perhaps dashing to the ground in his despair the chest he had brought with him, and having failed in his enterprise, rather than fall either within or without the walls into the enemy’s hands, he had sat down and calmly waited for death in the poisonous air. This was the last of the romantic side of the adventure which Rees was allowed to see. With his return to Goodhare and Sep came the greedy, the base, the commonplace. When the opening of the entrance for some hours had allowed fresh air to mingle with the poisonous gases in the passage, which Rees’s intrusion had moreover helped to disperse, in the cold grey light of the early morning Goodhare himself ventured to go down, followed by Sep, and, pushing aside the body with avaricious, ruthless hands, began to drag up one of the chests with long, lean, clutching fingers. Lord Hugh’s dead body fell to the ground with very little noise, his long cloak in a moment losing its shroud-like dignity and splitting into ragged strips. Goodhare did not heed it; Sep glanced at it with a shudder; only Rees felt still the influence of the sentiment with which the sight of the poor cavalier had impressed him. Then back again they all went into the chilly morning air, carrying one of the chests with them. They worked all through the hours of early morning, until not a single coin was left in the cavernous passage of all the treasure which Lord Hugh had guarded so long. They did not attempt to carry it away then, as the daylight was growing strong, and at any moment they might be espied by some laborer on his way to work. Leaving the chests just within the entrance to the passage, they replaced the stone, and covered that over carefully with the clods of turf. Then, forced to trust to chance the safety of their fortune, they parted and returned as quickly as they could to their homes.