"It should be here or hereabouts,
surely."
This was an idea. Helping himself to the shoulder-blade of some
deceased hero, Harold, using it as a trowel, began to scoop away the
soft sand upon which the stone chest stood. He scooped and scooped
manfully, but he could not come to the bottom of the kist.
He stepped back and looked at it. It must be one of two things--either
the hollow at the top was but a shallow cutting in a great block of
stone, or the kist had a false bottom.
He sprang at it. Seizing the giant skeleton by the spine, he jerked it
out of the kist and dropped it on one side in a bristling bony heap.
Just as he did so there came so furious a gust of wind that, buried as
they were in the earth, they literally felt the mound rock beneath it.
Instantly it was followed by a frightful crash overhead.
George collapsed in terror, and for a moment Harold could not for the
life of him think what had happened. He ran to the hole and looked up.
Straight above him he could see the sky, in which the first cold
lights of dawn were quivering. Mrs. Massey's summer-house had been
blown bodily away, and the "ancient British Dwelling Place" was once
more open to the sky, as it had been for centuries.
"The summer-house has gone, George," he said.
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