CHAPTER IX.
_In Which Tom and I Attend Several Funerals._ When Tom and I came to look over the ground with a view to finding a burial-place for the dead, I realised with grim emphasis the truth of Charlie Webster's remarks--in those snuggery nights that seemed so remote and far away--on the nature of the soil which would have to be gone over in quest of my treasure.

No wonder he had spoken of dynamite.
"Why, Tom," I said, "there isn't a wheel-barrow load of real soil in a square mile.

We couldn't dig a grave for a dog in stuff like this," and, as I spoke, the pewter-like rock under my feet clanged and echoed with a metallic sound.
It was indeed a terrible land from the point of view of the husbandman.
No wonder the Government couldn't dispose of it as a gift.

It was a marvel that anything had the fierce courage to grow on it at all.

For the most part it was of a grey clinker-like formation, tossed, as by fiery convulsions, in shelves of irregular strata, with holes every few feet suggesting the circular action of the sea--some of these holes no more than a foot wide, and some as wide as an ordinary-sized well--and in these was the only soil to be found.