Then there began to be a real noise in that room as Mark hammered a chisel into the flooring. It seemed to be a very thick board flooring and it took time to get some nails out. But they yielded finally, and the end of one floor-board that crossed the circle at its centre grew loose enough to be pried up. (Mark had insisted that he choose the centre of the circle. Nobody knew why, though they trusted him. He said that the centre was the middle of a thing and that whatever was there would be exactly under it. This sounded plausible.)
Then Mark had Richard take the chisel and wedge up the board a bit. It wouldn’t give very much, you know. He said Marjorie might hold the lantern and he’d peep into the darkness underneath and see what was there. Really, the moment _was_ very exciting. Nobody knew what Mark might see--they felt that he was brave to take the first look, for it might be ’most anything down there where Mark’s noise had come from!
They were silent while Mark, lying flat down on the attic floor, peered under the lifted end of the board. “I see gold pieces,” he gasped. “Say, give me more light--it must be buried treasure! _Didn’t I say I’d find it!_”
Marjorie and Richard looked at each other. _Was it true?_ “Let _us_ see,” they urged. Richard did peek. He said he couldn’t see very clearly but that there was something there that he thought looked like money. It was round and there was something that looked like a bag there--maybe a money bag! Marjorie was so excited that she couldn’t keep still long enough to see anything at all well. But she thought she saw something that looked like a piece of paper. Nobody else had seen that, so they all peeped again. “It is a lost will,” declared Mark. And they believed him.
Then they fell to opening the flooring in a most reckless way. It really was dreadful--but when one is expecting to get at a money bag and a lost will, one does not stop to consider the flooring. The board was whacked beyond recognition. The hammer and chisel fell to work and the flooring yielded to the onslaught. Then--Mark lifted the board! Ah!--Ah-ha!--
Richard held the lantern down so that it shone full upon the treasure; Marjorie gasped; Mark bent forward to see all there was to see. There was a pile of broken glass and some rags, corks--and buttons! Oh, yes, and there was a piece or so of white paper--not very large. The buttons were of metal, round brass buttons, tarnished and old. The paper was old white paper, yellow now. It was not a lost will at all! No, the money bag was just a round wad of cloth and Mark’s noise was--Mark’s noise was evidently a rat running around the rat’s nest that they had found! Alas, alas! There was no more mystery! The three had never seen a rat’s nest before but Richard had heard about them. He said, from the first, he’d said it was a mouse--but everybody knows that a mouse is very different from a rat!