Whereupon, Sholto holding the ladder at the top, Duke John and his Councillor mounted like shadows, and with Malise and James Douglas to guard them they were presently crouched in the passage with the door shut behind them, and the officers keeping watch at the foot of the tower without.

These five listened to the sounds of busy picks within the tower.  They could hear the ring of iron on stones and the panting of men engaged in severe toil.

“The marshal is preparing for flight,” whispered the Duke, exultantly.  “He is interring his treasures.  He has been warned.  But we will be overspeedy for him.”

And he chuckled in his satisfaction so loudly that Malise, using no ceremony with Duke or varlet at such a season, put his hand over his mouth.

Then one by one they crawled along the narrow passage on their hands and knees, and presently from a little balcony, plastered like a swallow’s nest on the inner wall of the tower, they found themselves looking down upon a strange scene.

A flight of steps led slantwise to the bottom, and at the foot of the tower, stripped to the waist, they beheld two men busily filling great sacks with a curious cargo.

The turret had never been finished.  It contained nothing whatever except the staircase.  So far as Sholto could see there was not even a window anywhere.  The door by which they had entered and another which evidently led into the interior of the castle were its only outlets.  The earth at the bottom had remained as it had been left by the builders, who surely must have thought that no madder architectural freak was ever planned than this shut tower of the Castle of Machecoul with its blank walls and sordid accoutrement.

But most strange of all, the original earth had been covered to the depth of a foot or more with dark objects, the true significance of which did not appear from the distance of the little gallery where the party of five had stationed themselves.

The two men at work below had brought torches with them, which were fastened to the walls by iron spikes.  The smoke from these hung in heavy masses about the tower, still further diminishing the clearness with which the watchers aloft could observe what went on below.

One of the workmen was tall and spare, with the forward thrust of head and neck seen in vultures and other unclean birds.  The other, who held the sacks while his companion shovelled, was on the contrary stout and short, of a notably jovial, rubicund countenance, in habit like the hostler of an inn, or perhaps a well-to-do carrier upon the roads.

The two worked without speaking, as if the task were distasteful.  When one sack was full, both would seize their picks and dig furiously at the floor of the tower.  Then when they had enough loosened, they would fall to shovelling the curiously shaped objects into the sacks again.

As Sholto looked down he heard a hissing whisper at his ear.