They kept it small because it was easier to hide; besides, he said, it was more fun having to squeeze through.
'Which of your mates took that bag ?' asked Downy sharply.
'None of 'em.' 'Why are you so positive ?' ''Cause I know they wouldn't be game.' 'Afraid of the darkness or the mine ?' 'No, afraid o' me.' Dick squared his shoulders manfully.
'Get out--why should they be afraid of you ?' 'Wasn't I legal an' minin' manager an' chairman o' the directors?
If one did what I told him not to he'd get the sack an' a lickin', too.' 'Oh, he would, eh?
Well, you'd better give me their names anyhow.

And now,' he continued after jotting down the names of the shareholders of the Mount of Gold, 'show me the track you took when you dragged the hide bag through the quarry.' Dick went back over his tracks, and Downy followed slowly on hands and knees, rescuing a hair or two from the edges of the rock or from a bramble here and there.
'Fortunately that bag of yours shed its hair freely, old man,' he said.
'here's corroborative evidence anyhow.

The bag went down all right--now let's see what proof there is that it came up again.' He returned to the hole in the rock and commenced another search, with his nose very close to the ground, moving slowly, and peering diligently into every little cranny amongst the stones.

At length, after travelling about ten yards in the direction of the spring in this fashion, be called sharply: 'Hi, Dick What were you doing with that bag here ?' 'Never had it nowhere near here,' answered Dick.
'Come, recollect; you put it down for a spell.' 'Didn't,' said Dick.
'Went straight along the side, an' dropped it into the shaft.' 'But look--there's hair on the top of this rock and a tuft on the corner.
Mustn't tell me a cow would roost there, my lad.' 'Don't care--'twasn't me.' Downy sat on the rock for a moment in a brown study, and the crowd, which had made itself comfort able in one end of the quarry and up one side, sat in awed silence, watching him closely, like a theatre audience waiting for some wonder-worker to perform his feats of magic.
The detective did nothing astonishing.

After collecting a portion of the hair he deposited it carefully in his pocket-book, deposited the book just as carefully in his breast-pocket, and then climbed out of the quarry and marched away towards the township; and the crowd, relieved from the restraint imposed by the law as personified in him, gathered about the stone and examined it wisely, discovering a much longer and more significant sermon in it than Downy had ever suspected, and finding marrow-freezing suggestiveness in the marks of rust upon the face of the rock, which were declared by common consent to be bloodstains.