Let us try them at least.  It will do no harm, and the day is young yet.”  They went forward to a spot beyond the stone yard, on the opposite side from the burnt stables, which they saw had once been railed off, for the blackened stumps of the posts were still in the ground.  It was a picturesque mass of confusion, apparently an outcrop of the limestone, not uncommon in that region.  But the lawyer probed the ground all about it.  It was light dry soil, with no trace of a rocky bottom.  Without a lever, their work was hard, but they succeeded in throwing off the large flat protecting slab, and in scattering its rocky supports.  “Man, Coristine, I believe you’re richt.” ejaculated the perspiring Carruthers.  Then he took the pick and loosened the ground, while the lawyer removed the earth with his spade.  “There’s no’ a root nor a muckle stane in the haill o’t, Coristine; this groond’s been wrocht afore, my lad.”  So they kept on, till at last the pick rebounded with a metallic clang.  “Let me clear it, Squire,” asked the lawyer, and, at once, his spade sent the sand flying, and revealed a box of japanned tin, the counterpart of that discovered by Muggins, which had only contained samples of grindstones.  A little more picking, and a little more spading, and the box came easily out.  It was heavy, wonderfully heavy, and it was padlocked.  The sharp edge of the spade loosened the lid sufficiently to admit the point of the pick, and, while Coristine hung on to the box, the Squire wrenched it open.  The tin box was full of notes and gold.

“There’s thoosands an’ thoosands here, Coristine, eneuch to keep yon puir body o’ a Matilda in comfort aa’ her days.  Man, it’s a graun’ discovery, an’ you’re the chiel that’s fund it,” cried the Squire, with exultation.  The lawyer peered in too, when, suddenly, he heard a shot, a bullet whizzed past his ear, and, the next moment, with a sickening thud, Carruthers fell to the ground.  Coristine rose to his feet like lightning, and faced an apparition; the Grinstun man, with pistol in one hand and life preserver in the other, was before him.  Without a moment’s hesitation he regained his grasp of his spade, and stretched the ghost at his feet, mercifully with the flat of it, and then relieved his victim of pistol and loaded skull-cracker.  He heard voices hailing, and recognized them as those of the veteran and the fisherman.  He replied with a loud cry of “Hurry, hurry, help!” which roused the prostrate spectre.  It arose and made a dash for the tin box, but Coristine threw himself upon the substantial ghost, and a struggle for life began.  They clasped, they wrestled, they fell over the poor unconscious Squire, and upset the tin box.  They clasped each other by the throat, the hair; they kicked with their feet, and pounded with their knees.  It was Grinstun’s last ditch, and he was game to hold it; but the lawyer was game too.  Sometimes he was up and had his hand on his opponent’s throat, and again, he could