"I don't care a d--n," said Sergeant Jakes, forgetful of school discipline; "if there's any scoundrel there, I'll drag him out. If it's old Colonel's bones--well I'm not afraid of them." There remained just light enough to show that the cart had been backed up to the entrance.
"Where you go, I go;" replied the dauntless Hopper; and into it they plunged, with their hearts beating high, but their spirit on fire for anything.
The sound of their steps, as they passed into the darkness, echoed the emptiness of the place. There was nothing to be felt, except rugged flinty sides, and the damp chill which gathered in their hair; and in the middle, a slab of broken stone, over which they stumbled into one another's arms. They had no means of striking a light; but as their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, they assured themselves that there was nothing more to learn, unless it might be from some small object on the floor. There seemed to be no shelves, no sort of fixture, no recesses; only the bare and unoccupied cave.
"I tell you what," said Sergeant Jakes, as they stood in the open air again; "this has been a smuggler's store in the war-time; a natural cave, improved no doubt. What we thought to find is gone further on, I fear. Too late, Master Hopper, to do any more to-day, and perhaps too late to do any more at all. But we must come again with a light, if possible on Monday."
"Well, one thing we have proved--that the villains, whoever they were, must have come from up the country; perhaps as far off as the Mendip Hills. But keep it to yourself, till we have settled what to do. Not a word to Tucker, or the news will be all over Perlycross to-night. Come back to the hoof-marks, and I'll take a copy. If we could only find the impressions of the men's feet too! You see after all, that Joe Crang spoke the truth. And it was the discovery of his 'Little Billy' that led me on in this direction."
There was light enough still, when they came back to the clay-patch, to make a rough tracing of the broken shoe, on the paper in which the youth had brought his bread and bacon; and even that great steeple-chaser was glad to go home in company, and upon a truss of furze, with a flour-sack to shield him from the stubs and prickles.