So Mrs Penhaligon, having picked up her clothes, issued forth into the sunlight of the back-yard.  ’Biades watched her through the narrow kitchen window.  He watched her cunningly.

As soon as he saw her busy with the clothes-pegs, Master ’Biades crept to a small iron door in the wall, a foot or two from the range, and stealthily lifted the latch.  The door opened on a deep, old-fashioned oven, disused since the day when the late Mrs Bunney (misguided woman) had blocked up her open hearth with a fire-new apparatus.

The child peered ("peeked” as they say in Polpier) into the long narrow chamber, so awesomely dark at its far end, and snatched a fearful joy.  In that cavity lay the treasure.  Gold—­untold gold!

He thrust his head into the aperture, and gloated.  But it was so deep that even when his eyes became used to the darkness he could see nothing of the hoard.  He wanted to gloat more.

Tingling premonitions ran down his small spine; thrills that, reaching the region of the lower vertebrae, developed an almost painful activity. . . .  None the less, ’Biades could never tell just how or at what moment his shoulders, hips, legs, found themselves inside the oven; but in they successively went, and he was crawling forward into the pitch-gloom on hands and knees, regretting desperately (and too late) that he had forgotten to sneak a box of matches, when afar behind him he heard a sound that raised every hair on the nape of his young neck—­the lifting of the back-door latch and the letting-in of voices.

“You never did!” said the voice of ’Bert.

“Leave me to tell her,” said the voice of ’Beida.  “The way you’re goin’, she’ll have the palpitations afore you begin. . . .  Mother, dear—­if you’ll but take a seat.  Is’t for the tenth or the twelfth time we’m tellin’ ’ee that father’s neither killed nor wounded?”

“Then what is it, on earth?” demanded the voice of Mrs Penhaligon.  “An’ why should Mr Nanjivell be followin’ you, of all people?  An’ where’s my blessed latest, that has been a handful ever since you two left me, well knowin’ the straits I’m put to?”

“If I’m introodin’, ma’am—­” said the voice of Nicky-Nan.

“Oh, no . . . not at all, Mr Nanjivell!—­so long as you realise how I’m situated. . . .  An’ whoever left that oven door open, I’ll swear I didn’t.”

’Beida stepped swiftly to the oven, swung the door wide enough to allow a moment’s glance within, and shut with a merciless clang.

She lifted her voice.  “Mebbe,” she announced, “’twas I that left it on the hasp before runnin’ out.  I was thinkin’ what a nice oven ‘twas, an’ how much better if you wanted to make heavy-cake in a hurry, to celebrate our movin’-in.  ’Bert agreed with me when I told him,” she continued, still lifting her voice, “and unbeknown to you we cut an’ fetched in a furze-bush, there bein’ nothin’ to give such a savour to bread, cake, or pie.  So if you’re willin’, Mother, we’ll fire it up while Mr Nanjivell tells his business.”