‘I confess that I am not absolutely insensible to the dramatic interest of the situation. My curiosity is excited. I own that I should like to know how my nephew happened to be buried. But don’t tell me if you’d rather not. I suppose no force was used?’ ‘Only moral force,’ said Alice. They used to talk a lot about moral force at the High School where she went, and in case you don’t know what it means I’ll tell you that it is making people do what they don’t want to, just by slanging them, or laughing at them, or promising them things if they’re good. ‘Only moral force, eh?’ said Albert-next-door’s uncle. ‘Well?’ ‘Well,’ Dora said, ‘I’m very sorry it happened to Albert--I’d rather it had been one of us. It would have been my turn to go into the tunnel, only I don’t like worms, so they let me off. You see we were digging for treasure.’ ‘Yes,’ said Alice, ‘and I think we were just coming to the underground passage that leads to the secret hoard, when the tunnel fell in on Albert. He _is_ so unlucky,’ and she sighed. Then Albert-next-door began to scream again, and his uncle wiped his face--his own face, not Albert’s--with his silk handkerchief, and then he put it in his trousers pocket. It seems a strange place to put a handkerchief, but he had his coat and waistcoat off and I suppose he wanted the handkerchief handy. Digging is warm work. He told Albert-next-door to drop it, or he wouldn’t proceed further in the matter, so Albert stopped screaming, and presently his uncle finished digging him out. Albert did look so funny, with his hair all dusty and his velvet suit covered with mould and his face muddy with earth and crying. We all said how sorry we were, but he wouldn’t say a word back to us. He was most awfully sick to think he’d been the one buried, when it might just as well have been one of us. I felt myself that it was hard lines. ‘So you were digging for treasure,’ said Albert-next-door’s uncle, wiping his face again with his handkerchief. ‘Well, I fear that your chances of success are small. I have made a careful study of the whole subject. What I don’t know about buried treasure is not worth knowing. And I never knew more than one coin buried in any one garden--and that is generally--Hullo--what’s that?’ He pointed to something shining in the hole he had just dragged Albert out of. Oswald picked it up. It was a half-crown. We looked at each other, speechless with surprise and delight, like in books. ‘Well, that’s lucky, at all events,’ said Albert-next-door’s uncle. ‘Let’s see, that’s fivepence each for you.’ ‘It’s fourpence--something; I can’t do fractions,’ said Dicky; ‘there are seven of us, you see.’ ‘Oh, you count Albert as one of yourselves on this occasion, eh?’ ‘Of course,’ said Alice; ‘and I say, he was buried after all. Why shouldn’t we let him have the odd somethings, and we’ll have fourpence each.’