And we were speechless, because, though we had read many times
about a moat being dragged for missing heirs and lost wills, we
really had never thought about exactly how it was done.

'Grappling-irons are right, I believe,' Denny said, 'but I don't
suppose they'd have any at the farm.'

And we asked, and found they had never even heard of them. I think
myself he meant some other word, but he was quite positive.

So then we got a sheet off Oswald's bed, and we all took our shoes
and stockings off, and we tried to see if the sheet would drag the
bottom of the moat, which is shallow at that end. But it would
keep floating on the top of the water, and when we tried sewing
stones into one end of it, it stuck on something in the bottom, and
when we got it up it was torn. We were very sorry, and the sheet
was in an awful mess; but the girls said they were sure they could
wash it in the basin in their room, and we thought as we had torn
it anyway, we might as well go on. That washing never came off.

'No human being,' Noel said, 'knows half the treasures hidden in
this dark tarn.'

And we decided we would drag a bit more at that end, and work
gradually round to under the dairy window where the milk-pan was.
We could not see that part very well, because of the bushes that
grow between the cracks of the stones where the house goes down
into the moat. And opposite the dairy window the barn goes
straight down into the moat too. It is like pictures of Venice;