“Yes. The quarry should be near here, shouldn’t it?” said Julian. “Well, there simply must be more lines somewhere! Ones that go to the quarry. Let’s look for the quarry first, though. We ought to see that easily enough!”

But it wasn’t really very easy to find because it was behind a great mass of thick tall gorse-bushes. Dick rounded them and stopped. Behind the enormous spread of bushes was a great pit, a sandy pit, quarried and hollowed for its beautiful sand.

“Here it is!” called Dick. “Come and look! My word, there’s been some quarrying here for sand. They must have taken tons and tons out of it!”

The others came to look. It certainly was an enormous pit, deep and wide. They put their packs beside it and leapt down. Their feet sank into the fine sand.

“The sides are pitted with holes,” said Dick. “I bet hundreds of sand-martins nest here in May!”

“There are even some caves,” said George, in surprise. “Sand-caves! Well, we can easily shelter here if we have rain. Some of these caves seem to go quite a long way back.”

“Yes. But I’d be a bit afraid of the sand falling in and burying me, if I crawled in,” said Anne. “It’s quite loose, look!” She scraped some down with her hand.

“I’ve found the lines!” called Julian. “Here, look. The sand has almost covered them. I trod on a rail and it was so rotten it broke beneath my foot!”

The others went to see, Timmy too. He was quite delighted with this place. The rabbit-holes in it! What fun he was going to have!

“Let’s follow these lines,” said Julian. So they kicked away the sand from the rails and followed them slowly out of the quarry and towards the ends of the other broken lines.

About ten yards from these the lines they were following were wrenched apart. Some were flung into nearby heather, and could be seen there, bent and rusty.

The children stared at them. “I guess the gypsies did that, when the Bartles were here years ago,” said Dick. “The day they attacked them perhaps. I say look, whatever’s that great lump over there, with gorse growing over it?”

They went to see. Timmy saw the lump and couldn’t make it out. He growled warningly at it.

Julian took up a broken piece of rail and forced back the gorse bush that had grown over and around the great lump, almost hiding it.

“See what it is?” he said, startled.

They all stared. “Why, it’s the engine! The little “injin” old Ben the blacksmith told us about!” said Dick. “It must have run right off the broken lines and over-turned here, and through the years these great gorse-bushes grew up and hid it. Poor old engine!”

Julian forced the gorse back a little more. “What a funny old-fashioned affair!” he said. “Look at the funnel, and the fat little boiler. And see, there’s the small cab. It can’t have had much power, only just enough to puff along with a few trucks!”