More than an hour elapsed before they could loosen another stone, and though they laboured with the utmost perseverance, relieving each other by turns, they had made but a small breach when morning arrived.

The stones were as hard and unyielding as iron, and the mortar in some places harder than the stones.
After a few hours' rest, they resumed their task.

Still, they made but small progress; and it was not until the third day that they had excavated a hole sufficiently wide and deep to admit one man within it.
They were now arrived at a compost of gravel and flint stones; and if they had found their previous task difficult, what they had now to encounter was infinitely more so.

Their implements made little or no impression on this unyielding substance, and though they toiled incessantly, the work proceeded with disheartening slowness.

The stones and rubbish were conveyed at dead of night in hampers into the garden, and buried.
One night, when they were labouring as usual, Guy Fawkes, who was foremost in the excavation, thought he heard the tolling of a bell within the wall.