"I should say, sir, the best place to bury them would be to make a hole in the foot of one of the pit-heaps, then we can shovel the loose stuff down from above. It would be a much shorter job than digging a hole, and there is no chance of their ever being disturbed there." "A very good plan, Simmonds. It will be an unpleasant job, anyhow. Wait a minute." On going to the dining-room he returned with two bottles of whisky. Hans and Peter assisted in carrying the bodies outside, and then offered to bring pails of water and remove the blood-stains in the hall, and after that to assist in carrying the bodies away. By this time the servant had come down and relighted the lamps in the drawing-room, and Yorke and Mr. Chambers went in there. "I wonder, sir," Yorke said, "that you were not afraid to keep so large a sum in your house." "I do not generally do so. As the gold is melted down, it is brought here for safety, and once a week it is sent to the bank, so that the amount seldom exceeds two thousand ounces. But this time it has been altogether different. When I saw that Kruger was bent upon war, I put all hands on to get the richest stuff in our reserves. The consequence was that the weekly output was five times as large as usual. I sent the ordinary amount to the bank, keeping the other by me, and intended to send it all down at once by rail in boxes with false marks on them, or if I could not do that, to keep it here till the war was over. Kruger's sudden ultimatum took me, as well as everyone else, by surprise. I was certain then that I could not get it down, and that if I sent it to the bank, Kruger and his people would lay hands upon it, as, in fact, they did with what I had sent in. "It was only a few of the officials in the smelting-room who had any idea of the output, and even these could hardly have told what amount I sent into the bank. It is clear, however, that one of them must have carelessly mentioned it, and that these fellows who made this attack must have discovered, perhaps from my servants who used to help to load the van, or from one of the guards who had accompanied it to unload it at the bank, that as the amount sent in was about the same as usual, there must remain a very large sum indeed hidden. I had really very little fear of the house being broken into, but in order to prevent any suspicion of there being money here, I discharged the men who always kept watch round the house at night at the same time that I paid off all the other hands, except the engineers who kept the pumping-engine at work to keep down the water in the mines. Then I relied upon the fact that burglars getting into the house would have difficulty in finding the safe, and still more difficulty in opening it.