"Come away," he said, in a tone which was far from being a cry of
pain. "Come away, lads, and give us a hand here. There's better
gear than rats in this hole, I'm thinking."
And, so saying, he rose to his knees and held out to us a heavy and
black piece of metal, which at first I took to be an iron bolt.
"Well, what is it?" I asked, taking the thing in my hand and
examining it.
"What is it?" said Hercus. "Can you not see, lad? Why, it's
silver!"
Chapter VII. What The Shingle Revealed.
Now the explanation of Willie's curious discovery, as we afterwards
fully learned, was this: When I took up the dead falcon, Hercus,
intent upon witnessing Selta's skill at ratting, stood beside the
dog as she scraped with her forefeet the shingle from the crevice
through which the rat had escaped. Disappointed at losing her
prize, the terrier dug and dug away at the shingle and moist sand,
scattering it behind her, and burying her nose deep down. Then a
strange, grim object was unearthed. In the midst of the stones,
Hercus, to his horror, saw lying there a ghastly human skull, with
the great cavities where the eyes had been, staring at him.
Hesitating at the sight of this frightful spectacle, he at last
mustered courage to take the thing in his hand. He was in the act
of examining it, when, from one of the hollow eye sockets, out
jumped the fugitive rat.
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