It was short--and seemed more like a spade." "A spade!" she gasped quickly in a low voice.

"A spade! Are you certain of that ?" "No, not at all certain.

We only had an instantaneous glance of them.
We were unfortunately too late to see them face to face." "The back of one of the men, the tall fellow in the brown suit, was broad and square--the back of someone who is familiar to me, only for the moment I can't recollect whose it resembles." She only spoke in a whisper, fearing lest we should be discovered.
I longed to scramble down and rush after the intruders, only the belief that one of them carried a spade and the other an iron bar struck me as curious, while at the same moment my eye caught sight of a portion of the ground below us at the base of the rock which had evidently been recently disturbed.
"It is a spade the man is carrying!" I cried excitedly.

"Look down there! They've just been burying something!" Her quick eyes followed the direction I indicated, and she answered: "I really believe they have concealed something!" Then when we had allowed the men to get beyond hearing, we both slipped down to the other side of the boulder and there discovered many signs that the earth had been hurriedly excavated and only just replaced.
Quicker than it takes to describe the exciting incident which followed, we broke down the branch of a tree and with it commenced moving the freshly disturbed earth, which was still soft and easily removed.
Muriel found a dead branch in the vicinity, and both of us set to work with a will, eager to ascertain what was hidden there.

That something had certainly been concealed was, to us, quite evident, but what it really was we could not surmise.