“Now, where’s this wonderful hiding-place?” asked the sergeant, as Julian turned from watching the caravans. He had tried to make out Sniffer and Liz, but the vans were too far away.

“Follow me!” said Julian, with a sudden grin and led the way back up the lines to where they broke off. The gorse-bush was there, and the old engine lay on its side as before, almost hidden.

“Whatever’s that?” said the sergeant, surprised.

“It’s the old Puffing Billy that used to pull the trucks of sand from the quarry,” said Dick. “Apparently there was a quarrel long ago between the owners of the quarry and the gypsies, and the gypsies pulled up the lines and the engine ran off and fell over. There it’s been ever since, as far as I can see!”

Julian went round to the funnel-end, and bent back the prickly gorse-branch that hid it. The sergeant looked on in surprise. Dick scraped the sand out of the top of the funnel and then pulled out one of the packages. He had been afraid they would not be there.

“Here you are!” he said, and tossed the packet to the sergeant. “There are plenty more. I’ll come to the one we opened in a minute - yes - here it is.”

The sergeant and Wilkins were amazed to see the packages hauled up from such a peculiar hiding-place. No wonder the gypsies hadn’t found them. Nobody would ever have looked down the funnel of the old engine, even if they had spotted it, half-buried as it was.

The sergeant looked at the hundred-dollar notes in the opened parcel and whistled. “My word, this is it! We’ve seen these before, beautiful forgeries they are! If the gang had got rid of this lot, a great many people would have suffered. The money is worth nothing! How many packets did you say there were?”

“Dozens!” said Dick, and pulled more of them out of the funnel. “Gosh, I can’t reach the ones at the bottom.”

“Never mind,” said the sergeant. “Put some sand in to hide them and I’ll send a man to poke the rest out with a stick. The gypsies have gone and they are the only people likely to hunt for them. This is a wonderful scoop! You kids have certainly put us on to something.”

“I’m glad,” said Julian. “I say, we’d better collect all the things we left here yesterday, hadn’t we? We went off in rather a hurry, you see, Sergeant, and left our things in the quarry.”

He and George went into the quarry to collect the things they had left there. Timmy went with them. He suddenly growled, and George stopped, her hand on his collar.

“What’s up, Tim? Ju, there must be somebody here! Is it one of the gypsies, do you think?”

Then Timmy stopped growling and wagged his tail. He dragged away from George’s hand and ran over to one of the little caves in the sandy walls. He looked most peculiar with the patch on his head.