Goaded to exasperation he at last took up the well worn and exceedingly dirty carpet to find out what was the matter with the boards. He discovered to his amazement that they were not only loose but movable, and evidently intended to be movable. One of them had a brass ring, by which it could without difficulty be lifted out of its place. Once it was lifted those on each side could be moved too. Mr. Eames, mildly excited, uncovered a square hole into which it was possible to step. The legend of the existence of a passage connecting the church with the cave came back to his mind. There must, he thought, be some truth in it, for he had lit on what looked like the end of a passage leading from the church to somewhere, perhaps into the cave. With the aid of an ordnance survey map and some measurements which he took, he reached the conclusion that the end of the cave must be directly under the church. He discovered the chimney in the cave's roof which had excited Beth and Jimmy when they found it. It seemed perfectly plain that the hole inside the church and the chimney in the cave were part of one passage. Unfortunately the hole was filled with stones and loose earth. In order to establish the connection, Mr. Eames had to do some excavating. He brought up the spade from the vicarage and afterwards the pickaxe which Mrs. Eames missed and supposed to be lost or stolen. Coming on a large block of stone, one of the main causes of the obstruction, he found that he could not move it with his hands. He went very early in the morning and took young Bunce's tackle from the mouth of the cave. After the removal of that stone he got on rapidly and had almost completed the clearance when Beth and Jimmy visited the cave. "I have great hopes," he said simply, "that your aunt will be pleased when I show her the hole leading straight down into the cave." "I'm sure she will," said Beth. "And she'll never be able to say again that I do nothing for the parish. A discovery like that ought to be quite useful for any parish. Don't you think so?" "It will make Hailey Compton famous," said Beth, "and Aunt Agatha will be able to get up another pageant to show it off." Jimmy seemed uninterested in the ultimate value of the hole to the modern parish. He wanted to understand what it was like and how it was originally used. "Are there any remains of steps?" he asked. "Oh no," said Mr. Eames, "it's just a hole. In fact I shall have to be very careful not to fall through when I'm finishing off the digging." "I didn't see any sign of steps at the lower opening," said Jimmy. "They may have used ladders," said Beth. "My idea," said the vicar, "is that the men didn't go up and down at all. The passage was only used for hoisting things from the cave into the church. It's just a straight drop like a well, and anything could be pulled up." "Anyhow," said Jimmy, "it's a most interesting thing and everybody ought to be most grateful to you for finding it."