Alas! there
was no trace in its debris of 'pay dirt,' as the western miner puts
it. While the dynamite expert was on the spot, we induced him to
shatter the anvil as well as the block of cement, and then the
workman, doubtless thinking the new earl was as insane as the old one
had been, shouldered his tools, and went back to his mine.
The earl reverted to his former opinion that the gold was concealed in
the park, while I held even more firmly to my own belief that the
fortune rested in the library.
'It is obvious,' I said to him, 'that if the treasure is buried
outside, someone must have dug the hole. A man so timorous and so
reticent as your uncle would allow no one to do this but himself.
Higgins maintained the other evening that all picks and spades were
safely locked up by himself each night in the tool-house. The mansion
itself was barricaded with such exceeding care that it would have been
difficult for your uncle to get outside even if he wished to do so.
Then such a man as your uncle is described to have been would
continually desire ocular demonstration that his savings were intact,
which would be practically impossible if the gold had found a grave in
the park. I propose now that we abandon violence and dynamite, and
proceed to an intellectual search of the library.
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