‘No,’ said Edward, ‘but I’ll ask father.’
‘Rot.’ Gustus was crisp and contemptuous. ‘He’d think you was off your chump, and he’d get me lagged.’
‘It would be stealing,’ said Edward.
‘Not when you’ll pay it back.’
‘Yes, it would,’ said Edward. ‘Oh, don’t ask me – I can’t.’
‘Then I shall,’ said Gustus. ‘Where’s his room.’
‘Oh, don’t!’ said Edward. ‘I’ve got a half-sovereign of my own. I’ll give you that.’
‘Lawk!’ said Gustus. ‘Why the blue monkeys couldn’t you say so? Come on.’
He pulled Edward out of bed by the leg, hurried his clothes on anyhow, and half-dragged, half-coaxed him through the window and down by the ivy and the chicken-house roof.
They stood face to face in the sloping garden and Edward’s teeth chattered. Gustus caught him by his hand, and led him away.
At the other end of the shrubbery, where the rockery was, Gustus stooped and dragged out a big clinker – then another, and another. There was a hole like a big rabbit-hole. If Edward had really been a white rabbit it would just have fitted him.
‘I’ll go first,’ said Gustus, and went, head-foremost. ‘Come on,’ he said, hollowly, from inside. And Edward, too, went. It was dreadful crawling into that damp hole in the dark. As his head got through the hole he saw that it led to a cave, and below him stood a dark figure. The lantern was on the ground.
‘Come on,’ said Gustus, ‘I’ll catch you if you fall.’
With a rush and a scramble Edward got in.
‘It’s caves,’ said Gustus. ‘A chap I know that goes about the country bottoming cane-chairs, ’e told me about it. And I nosed about and found he lived here. So then I thought what a go. So now we’ll put your half-shiner down and look at it, and we’ll have a gold-mine, and you can pretend to find it.’
‘Halves!’ said Edward, briefly and firmly.
‘You’re a man,’ said Gustus. ‘Now, then!’ He led the way through a maze of chalk caves till they came to a convenient spot, which he had marked. And now Edward emptied his pockets on the sand – he had brought all the contents of his money-box, and there was more silver than gold, and more copper than either, and more odd rubbish than there was anything else. You know what a boy’s pockets are like. Stones and putty, and slate-pencils and marbles – I urge in excuse that Edward was a very little boy – a bit of plasticine, one or two bits of wood.
‘No time to sort ’em,’ said Gustus, and, putting the lantern in a suitable position, he got out the glass and began to look through it at the tumbled heap.
And the heap began to grow. It grew out sideways till it touched the walls of the recess, and outwards till it touched the top of the recess, and then it slowly worked out into the big cave and came nearer and nearer to the boys. Everything grew – stones, putty, money, wood, plasticine.
Edward patted the growing mass as though it were alive and he loved it, and Gustus said:
‘Here’s clothes, and beef, and bread, and tea, and coffee – and baccy – and a good school, and me a engineer. I see it all a-growing and a-growing.’
‘Hi – stop!’ said Edward suddenly.
Gustus dropped the telescope. It rolled away into the darkness.
‘Now you’ve done it,’ said Edward.
‘What?’ said Gustus.
‘My hand,’ said Edward, ‘it’s fast between the rock and the gold and things. Find the glass and make it go smaller so that I can get my hand out.’
But Gustus could not find the glass. And, what is more, no one ever has found it to this day.
‘It’s no good,’ said Gustus, at last. ‘I’ll go and find your father. They must come and dig you out of this precious Tom Tiddler’s ground.’
‘And they’ll lag you if they see you. You said they would,’ said Edward, not at all sure what lagging was, but sure that it was something dreadful. ‘Write a letter and put it in his letter-box. They’ll find it in the morning.’
‘And leave you pinned by the hand all night? Likely – I don’t think,’ said Gustus.
‘I’d rather,’ said Edward, bravely, but his voice was weak. ‘I couldn’t bear you to be lagged, Gustus. I do love you so.’
‘None of that,’ said Gustus, sternly. ‘I’ll leave you the lamp; I can find my way with matches. Keep up your pecker, and never say die.’
‘I won’t,’ said Edward, bravely. ‘Oh, Gustus!’
That was how it happened that Edward’s father was roused from slumbers by violent shakings from an unknown hand, while an unknown voice uttered these surprising words: —
‘Edward is in the gold and silver and copper mine that we’ve found under your garden. Come and get him out.’
When Edward’s father was at last persuaded that Gustus was not a silly dream – and this took some time – he got up.
He did not believe a word that Gustus said, even when Gustus added ‘S’welp me!’ which he did several times.
But Edward’s bed was empty – his clothes gone.
Edward’s father got the gardener from next door – with, at the suggestion of Gustus, a pick – the hole in the rockery was enlarged, and they all got in.
And when they got to the place where Edward was, there, sure enough, was Edward, pinned by the hand between a piece of wood and a piece of rock. Neither the father nor the gardener noticed any metal. Edward had fainted.
They got him out; a couple of strokes with the pick released his hand, but it was bruised and bleeding.
They all turned to go, but they had not gone twenty yards before there was a crash and a loud report like thunder, and a slow rumbling, rattling noise very dreadful to hear.
‘Get out of this quick, sir,’ said the gardener; ‘the roof’s fell in; this part of the caves ain’t safe.’
Edward was very feverish and ill for several days, during which he told his father the whole story – of which his father did not believe a word. But he was kind to Gustus, because Gustus was evidently fond of Edward.
When Edward was well enough to walk in the garden his father and he found that a good deal of the shrubbery had sunk, so that the trees looked as though they were growing in a pit.
It spoiled the look of the garden, and Edward’s father decided to move the trees to the other side.
When this was done the first tree uprooted showed a dark hollow below it. The man is not born who will not examine and explore a dark hollow in his own grounds. So Edward’s father explored.
This is the true story of the discovery of that extraordinary vein of silver, copper, and gold which has excited so much interest in scientific and mining circles. Learned papers have been written about it, learned professors have been rude to each other about it, but no one knows how it came there except Gustus and Edward and you and me. Edward’s father is quite as ignorant as any one else, but he is much richer than most of them; and, at any rate, he knows that it was Gustus who first told him of the gold-mine, and who risked being lagged – arrested by the police, that is – rather than let Edward wait till morning with his hand fast between wood and rock.
So Edward and Gustus have been to a good school, and now they are at Winchester, and presently they will be at Oxford. And when Gustus is twenty-one