He tried to project his mind into those of the Professors, as though they were a team of straying bullocks whose probable action he must determine before he set out to look for them.

On reflection, he concluded that the hidden property was not likely to be far from the spot on which he now was.  The Professors would wait till they had got some way down towards Sunch’ston, so as to have readier access to their property when they wanted to remove it; but when they came upon a path and other signs that inhabited dwellings could not be far distant, they would begin to look out for a hiding-place.  And they would take pretty well the first that came.  “Why, bless my heart,” he exclaimed, “this tree is hollow; I wonder whether—­” and on looking up he saw an innocent little strip of the very tough fibrous leaf commonly used while green as string, or even rope, by the Erewhonians.  The plant that makes this leaf is so like the ubiquitous New Zealand Phormium tenax, or flax, as it is there called, that I shall speak of it as flax in future, as indeed I have already done without explanation on an earlier page; for this plant grows on both sides of the great range.  The piece of flax, then, which my father caught sight of was fastened, at no great height from the ground, round the branch of a strong sucker that had grown from the roots of the chestnut tree, and going thence for a couple of feet or so towards the place where the parent tree became hollow, it disappeared into the cavity below.  My father had little difficulty in swarming the sucker till he reached the bough on to which the flax was tied, and soon found himself hauling up something from the bottom of the tree.  In less time than it takes to tell the tale he saw his own familiar red blanket begin to show above the broken edge of the hollow, and in another second there was a clinkum-clankum as the bundle fell upon the ground.  This was caused by the billy and the pannikin, which were wrapped inside the blanket.  As for the blanket, it had been tied tightly at both ends, as well as at several points between, and my father inwardly complimented the Professors on the neatness with which they had packed and hidden their purchase.  “But,” he said to himself with a laugh, “I think one of them must have got on the other’s back to reach that bough.”

“Of course,” thought he, “they will have taken the nuggets with them.”  And yet he had seemed to hear a dumping as well as a clinkum-clankum.  He undid the blanket, carefully untying every knot and keeping the flax.  When he had unrolled it, he found to his very pleasurable surprise that the pannikin was inside the billy, and the nuggets with the receipt inside the pannikin.  The paper containing the tea having been torn, was wrapped up in a handkerchief marked with Hanky’s name.

“Down, conscience, down!” he exclaimed as he transferred the nuggets, receipt, and handkerchief to his own pocket.  “Eye of my soul that you are! if you offend me I must pluck you out.”  His conscience feared him and said nothing.  As for the tea, he left it in its torn paper.