"A BLOW FOR LIBERTY"
Ruth was a healthy girl and particularly free from "nerves"; but she _was_
frightened. She was so proud that she determined not to admit to her
companions that she was lost In the caves.
Indeed, she was not entirely sure that she _was_ lost. Perhaps this was
the way she had come with Jerry. Only, she did not remember passing the
little room with the four tunnels opening out of it.
This first passage into which she had ventured with so much apparent
boldness proved to be the wrong one within a very few moments. She came to
the end of it--against an unbroken wall.
There she remained until she had conquered her nervous sobbing and removed
as well as she could the traces of tears from her face. When she returned
to Tom and Ralph she held the lantern well down, so that the shadow was
cast upon her face.
"How about it, Ruth?" demanded Tom, cheerfully, when she reappeared.
"That's not the one. It is just a pocket," declared Ruth. "Wait till I try
another."
"Well, don't be all night about it," growled Tingley, ungraciously. "We're
wasting a lot of time here."
Ruth did not reply, but took the next tunnel. She followed this for even a
shorter distance before finding it closed.
"Only two more. That's all right!" exclaimed Tom. "Narrows the choice
down, and we'll be surer of hitting the right one--eh, Ruthie?"
She knew that he was talking thus to keep her courage up. Dear old Tom! he
was always to be depended upon.
She gathered confidence herself, however, when she had gone some distance
into the third passage. There was a place where she had to climb upon a
shelf to get along, because the floor was covered with big stones, and she
remembered this place clearly.
So she turned and swung her Tight, calling to the boys. Her voice went
echoing through the tunnel and soon brought a reply and the sound of
scrambling feet.
"Hold up that lantern!" yelled Ralph, rather crossly. "How do you expect
us to see?"
Young Tingley's nerves were "on edge," and like a good many other people
when they get that way, he was short-tempered.
"Now we're all right, are we, Ruth?" cried Tom.
"I remember this place," the girl of the Red Mill replied. "I couldn't be
mistaken. Now you take the lantern, Tom, and lead on."
They pursued the tunnel to its very end. There it branched again and Ruth
boldly took the right hand passage. Whether it was right, or no, she
proposed to attack it firmly.
After a time Tom exclaimed: "Hullo, Ruthie! do you really think this is
right?"
"What do you mean?"
He held up the lantern in silence. Ruth and Ralph crowded forward to look
over his shoulders.
There was a heap of rubbish and earth half-filling the tunnel. It had not
fallen from the roof, although neither that nor the sides of the tunnel
were of solid rock.
"You never came through this place, Ruth!" exclaimed Ralph, in that
"I-told-you-so" tone that is so hard to bear.
"I--I didn't see this place--no," admitted Ruth.
"Of course you didn't!" declared Ralph, crossly. "Why! it's right up
against the end of the tunnel."
"It _does_ look as though we were blocked, Ruthie," said Tom, with less
confidence.
"Then we'll have to go back and try the other passage," returned the girl,
choking a little.
"See here!" cried Tom, suddenly. "Somebody's been digging here. That's
where all this stuff comes from, underfoot."
"Where?" asked the others, crowding forward to look closer. Tom set down
the lantern and picked up a broken spade. There was a cavity in the wall
of this pocket-like passage. With a flourish Tom dug the broken blade of
the spade into the gritty earth.
"This is what Jerry wanted that mattock for, I bet!" he exclaimed.
"Oh, dear, me! do you believe so?" cried Ruth. "Then, right here, is where
he thought he might find his uncle's treasure box."
"Ho, ho!" ejaculated Ralph. "That old hunter was just as crazy as he could
be--father says so."
"Well, that wouldn't keep him from having money; would it?--and might be a
very good reason for his burying it."
"And the papers he declared would prove his title to a part of this
island," Ruth hastened to add.
That didn't please Ralph any too well. "My father owns the island, and
don't you forget it!" he declared.
"Well, we don't have to quarrel about it," snapped Tom, rather disgusted
with the way Ralph was behaving. "Come on! we might as well go back. But
here's one blow for liberty!" and he laughed and flung the spade forward
with all his strength.
Jerry Sheming had never suspected it, or he would not have left the
excavation just as he had. There was but a thin shell beyond where he had
been digging, and the spade in Tom's hand went clear through.
"For the goodness gracious grannies!" gasped Tom, scrambling off his
knees. "I--I came near losing that spade altogether."
There was a fall of earth beyond the hole. They heard it rolling and
tumbling down a sharp descent.
"Hold the lantern here, Ruth!" cried Tom, trying to peer into the opening.
Ruth did so. The rays revealed a hole, big enough for a man to creep
through. It gave entrance, it seemed, to another cavern--and one of good
size.
"Oh, my dear!" exclaimed Ruth, seizing Tom's arm. "I just know what this
means."
"You may. _I_ don't," laughed Tom Cameron.
"Why, this other cavern is the one that was buried under the landslide.
Jerry said he knew about where it was, and he's been trying to dig into
it."
"Oh, yes; there was a landslide on this side of the cliff just about the
time father was negotiating for the purchase of the island last summer,"
said Ralph. "We all came up here to look at the place a while afterward.
We camped in a tent about where the lodge now stands. That old crazy
hunter had just been taken away from here. They say he tried to kill
Blent."
"And maybe he had good reason," said Tom. "Blent is without a doubt a
pretty mean proposition."
"Just the same, the island is my father's," declared Ralph, with
confidence. "He bought it, right enough."
"All right. But you think, Ruth, that perhaps it was in this buried cave
that old Mr. Tilton hid his money box?"
"So Jerry said. It looks as though Jerry had been digging here----"
"Let's have another crack at it!" cried Tom, and went to work with the
spade again.
In ten minutes he had scattered considerable earth and made the hole much
larger. They held the lantern inside and saw that the floor of the other
cavity was about on a level with the one in which they stood. Tom slid the
old spade through the hole, and then went through himself.
"Come on! let's take a look," he said, reaching up for Ruth and the
lantern.
"But this isn't finding a way out," complained Ralph. "What will the other
folks say?"
"We'll find the opening later. We couldn't venture outside now, anyway. It
is still storming, you can bet," declared the eager Tom.
Ruth's sharp eyes were peering here and there. The cavern they had entered
was almost circular and had a dome-shaped roof. There were shelves all
around several feet above the floor. Some of these ledges slanted inward
toward the rock, and one could not see much of them.
"Lift me up here, Tom!" commanded the girl. "I want to scramble up on the
ledge."
"You'll hurt yourself."
"Nonsense! Can't I climb a tree almost as well as Ann Hicks?"
He gave her a lift and Ruth scrambled over the edge with a little squeal.
"Oh, oh, oh!" she cried. "Here's something."
"Must be," grunted Tom, trying to climb up himself. "Why, I declare,
Ruthie! that's a box."
"It's a little chest. It's ironbound, too. My! how heavy. I can't lift
it."
"Tumble it down and let's see," commanded Ralph, holding the lantern.
Ruth sat down suddenly and looked at the boys.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't know that we've got any right to touch
it. It's padlocked. Maybe it is old Mr. Tilton's treasure-box."
"That would be great!" cried Tom.
"But I don't know," continued Ruth, reflectively. "We would better not
touch it. I wouldn't undertake to advise Jerry what to do if _he_ found
it. But this is what they call 'treasure trove,' I guess. At least, it was
what that Rufus Blent had in mind, all right, when he sold Mr. Tingley the
island with the peculiar reservation clause in the deed."