It showed out in the now brilliant flare of the taper--a broken and twisted slab of wood or metal, propped against the base of the wall in that angle of it where the bed had once lain. Brion took a step or two, and bent. ‘It is heavy as lead,’ he said. ‘Why, it _is_ lead!’--and, with a heave or two, he trundled the thing away, and let it drop upon the floor. In the place where it had stood was revealed an oblong opening, forming the mouth to a cavity of unknown depth. With a shout of excitement he thrust in his hand, and, finding a hold for it in an iron stanchion affixed to some object, pulled with all his force. And, with his pull, there came sliding easily into the light a thing of very wonder. Brion, rising erect, turned speechless to Joan, and she to him; and then with a sudden impulse they held to one another and both looked down. They saw a long wooden coffer of stout oak, measuring, it might be, three feet by one, with a depth of eighteen inches, running readily on little wheels, and full to the brim of gold and precious stones. He gasped, and looked into her face. ‘The picaroon’s booty,’ he said, in an amazed, awestruck voice--and could say no more. She brought him to his wits with a pull and whisper:-- ‘O, Brion!’ ‘And O, Joan!’ he cried. ‘Do you see? It was this secret the poor murdered maid unearthed; and, after her, Melton.’ Suddenly he broke from her, and darting for the slab, pulled it this way and that. ‘I understand,’ he cried--‘I understand. Come here, Joan, while I show you.’ And when she ran to him, she saw. What might have been taken for a great stone at the base of the wall proved on examination to have been a thick leaden slab, made to fit like a door into its place, and so treated with roughcast on a heated and liquid surface as to be rendered indistinguishable from the other stones about it. By what device it had been made originally to open and disclose its inner secrets did not appear, the whole thing having been so hacked and wrenched to force it from its position as to destroy any clue that might otherwise have been to the nature of its mechanism. ‘But _how_ did he discover it?’ said Brion; ‘since I know, from my own experiments, that no sounding would be enough.’ That interest seemed to absorb him for the moment above any other. He puzzled, clutching at his hair. Suddenly his face lit up:--