Penny grabbed the twins, took them into a corner and told them what she knew and that Vasson had already said that the wind had dropped and that the gap in the bank was being filled.

"We're meeting in your secret room in five minutes," David called, and Penny then excused herself and ran up to her bedroom for a jersey.

There she leaned from her window and sniffed at the breeze coming in from the sea. The storm had long since blown itself out and the sky above the chimney-pots was a delicate egg-shell blue, across which a few white, woolly clouds sailed serenely. For some reason she could not explain, Penny felt disappointed and rather sad. She had expected to do so much for her aunt, and although they had certainly all had an amazing adventure, she had really done very little. It was nice of Mr. Morton to be so friendly and helpful, but she did wonder whether he was only pretending that there might be a treasure so that they should not be disappointed.

She glanced round into the little walled garden now glowing in the evening sunshine and noticed at once that the old wall through which the withy tree had been growing had collapsed in the storm and lay now across the flowerbed in a pile of dusty rubble; and the tree, round which some kindly mason, many years ago, had built the wall, now lay amongst the ruins.

Penny ran down the little stairs to the main corridor, hoping that she would find Jon before the others came. She leaned over the banisters and saw her cousin rather moodily kicking the smouldering logs in the lounge fire.

"Oy!" she called vulgarly. "Where are the others?"

Jon looked up. "I think they're all changing into clothes suitable for exploration! What do you want?"

"I've got something to tell you."

He strolled up and they sat together on the top stair.

"What's up, Penny? You look glum... I feel a bit flat too... Everything seems to have fizzled out, doesn't it?"

Penny was rather surprised that he felt the same, but she told him quickly of the fallen wall and what it might mean.

"Don't you see, Jon, that the passage may have been filled up? We'd better be ready for it. What do you think Mr. Morton is going to discover? I don't really want him to find anything, Jon. I want us to find it."

But before he could answer the others arrived and they all trooped upstairs together.

Jon unlocked the door of their room and stood aside for the grown-ups to enter first. Then the twins showed their father the diamond-scratched window-pane and would have opened the panel immediately if David had not pulled them back.

"Would you like to see the other papers now, sir?" Jon said. "Or shall we do the passage first?"