We had to settle where the gold was to be hid. After a lot of talk we agreed to keep one bag in a hole in the side of the wall of the cave, and bury the others in the place where we’d found old Mr. Devereaux’s box. His treasure had lain many a year safe and sound without anybody touching it, and we thought ours might do the same. Besides, to find it they must get into the Hollow first. So we packed it out bag by bag, and made an ironbark coffin for it, and buried it away there, and put some couch-grass turfs on it. We knew they’d soon grow up, and nobody could tell that it hadn’t always been covered up the same as the rest of the old garden.

It felt pretty hard lines to think we shouldn’t be able to get away from this lonely place after the life we’d led the last year; but Star light wasn’t often wrong, and we came to the same way of thinking ourselves when we looked at it all round, steady and quiet like.

We’d been a week or ten days all by ourselves, horse-breaking, fishing, and shooting a bit, thinking how strange it was that we should have more than £20,000 in gold and money and not be able to do anything with it, when dad, sudden like, said he’d go out himself and get some of the newspapers, and perhaps a letter or two if they came.

Starlight laughed at him a bit for being foolhardy, and said we should hear of his being caught and committed for trial. “Why, they’ll know the dog,” says he, “and make him give evidence in court. I’ve known that done before now. Inspector Merlin nailed a chap through his dog.”

Father grinned. “I know’d that case—a sheep-stealing one. They wanted to make out Brummy was the man as owned the dorg—a remarkable dorg he was, too, and had been seen driving the sheep.”

“Well, what did the dog do? Identify the prisoner, didn’t he?”

“Well, the dashed fool of a collie did. Jumps up as soon as he was brought into court, and whines and scratches at the dock rails and barks, and goes on tremenjus, trying to get at Brummy.”

“How did his master like it?”

“Oh! Brummy? He looked as black as the ace of spades. He’d have made it hot for the dorg if he could ha’ got at him. But I suppose he forgived him when he came out.”

“Why should he?”

“Because the jury fetched him in guilty without leaving the box, and the judge give him seven years. You wouldn’t find this old varmint a-doin’ no such foolishness as that.”