Soon passing through the thin crust of vegetable mould, we found the red boulder clay beneath exceedingly stiff and hard; but day after day saw us perseveringly at work; and we succeeded in digging a huge square pit, about six feet in length and breadth, and fully seven feet deep. Fixing four upright posts in the corners, we lined our apartment with slender spars nailed closely together; and we had prepared for giving it a massive roof of beams formed of fallen trees, and strong enough to bear a layer of earth and turf from a foot to a foot and a half in depth, with a little opening for the trap-door; when we found, one morning, on pressing onwards to the scene of our labours, that we were doggedly tracked by a horde of boys considerably more numerous than our own party. Their curiosity had been excited, like that of the Princess Nekayah in Rasselas, by the tools which we carried, and by "seeing that we had directed our walk every day to the same point;" and in vain, by running and doubling, by scolding and remonstrating, did we now attempt shaking them off. I saw that, were we to provoke a general _mélée_, we could scarce expect to come off victors; but deeming myself fully a match for their stoutest boy, I stepped out and challenged him to come forward and fight me. He hesitated, looked foolish, and refused; but said, he would readily fight with any of my party except myself. I immediately named my friend of the Doocot Cave, who leaped out with a bound to meet him; but the boy, as I had anticipated, refused to fight him also; and, observing the proper effect produced, I ordered my lads to march forward; and from an upper slope of the hill we had the satisfaction of seeing that our pursuers, after lingering for a little while on the spot on which we had left them, turned homewards, fairly cowed, and pursued us no more. But, alas! on reaching our secret chamber, we ascertained, by marks all too unequivocal, that it was to be secret no longer. Some rude hand had torn down the wooden lining, and cut two of the posts half through with a hatchet; and on returning disconsolately to the town, we ascertained that Johnstone the forester had just been there before us, declaring that some atrociously wicked persons--for whose apprehension a proclamation was to be instantly issued--had contrived a diabolical trap, which he had just discovered, for maiming the cattle of the gentleman, his employer, who farmed the Hill. Johnstone was an old Forty-Second man, who had followed Wellington over the larger part of the Peninsula; but though he had witnessed the storming and sack of San Sebastian, and a great many other bad things, nothing had he ever seen on the Peninsula, or anywhere else, he said, half so mischievous as the cattle-trap. We, of course, kept our own secret; and as we all returned under the cloud of night, and with heavy hearts filled up our excavation level with the soil, the threatened proclamation was never issued.