Then Albert-next-door began to scream again, and his uncle wiped his
face--his own face, not Albert's--with his silk handkerchief, and then
he put it in his trousers pocket. It seems a strange place to put a
handkerchief, but he had his coat and waistcoat off and I suppose he
wanted the handkerchief handy. Digging is warm work.

He told Albert-next-door to drop it, or he wouldn't proceed further in
the matter, so Albert stopped screaming, and presently his uncle
finished digging him out. Albert did look so funny, with his hair all
dusty and his velvet suit covered with mould and his face muddy with
earth and crying.

We all said how sorry we were, but he wouldn't say a word back to us.
He was most awfully sick to think he'd been the one buried, when it
might just as well have been one of us. I felt myself that it was hard
lines.

'So you were digging for treasure,' said Albert-next-door's uncle,
wiping his face again with his handkerchief. 'Well, I fear that your
chances of success are small. I have made a careful study of the whole
subject. What I don't know about buried treasure is not worth knowing.
And I never knew more than one coin buried in any one garden--and that
is generally--Hullo--what's that?'

He pointed to something shining in the hole he had just dragged Albert
out of. Oswald picked it up. It was a half-crown. We looked at each
other, speechless with surprise and delight, like in books.

'Well, that's lucky, at all events,' said Albert-next-door's uncle.