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something slither across his legs. A snake, or a muskrat? Whatever it was, it scared him out of his wits, and he shot forward as if a jet were attached to him.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with you?” Joe asked.
    â€œNothing,” Frank mumbled. “Except I got attacked by a snake or something.”
    Joe laughed.
    â€œIt’s not funny!” Frank grated.
    As they got closer to the old house, there was a tremendous crack and a dark tree branch fell straight at Joe. Frank had no time to warn him. Instead, he knocked his brother down with a football block to get him out of the way. The branch was almost a foot in diameter and Joe shivered once he had recovered from his shock.
    â€œThat thing could’ve killed me!” he said hoarsely.
    â€œYou want to go back?” Frank asked.
    â€œN-no! There’s the house up ahead.”
    It was not much of a house anymore. The original walls were still there, but the roof was almost gone. Much of the floor had been torn up and the cellar was filled with broken boards and scattered debris.
    â€œNot where you think it be, but up the hill and down,” Frank recited from memory, looking around the terrain. It was mostly flat and they already had climbed a little hill to get there.
    â€œDown which way?” Joe asked.
    â€œI suppose we have to go to the back of the house and see what we find.”
    Behind the building, indeed, the ground sloped down. But to what?
    â€œThe roots sink deep, and Simbu will not sleep,” Joe intoned. “What roots? I can’t even see any big trees anywhere around here.”
    â€œMaybe it refers to a root cellar!” Frank said suddenly. “They were common in those days. People stored their vegetables in them before they had refrigeration.”
    â€œGood idea,” Joe admitted. “Now, where would that root cellar be?”
    â€œWe’ll have to hop up and down all over that little hill and see if we hear a hollow sound,” Frank said. “Come on!”
    The boys slipped and slid around in the mud for the better part of an hour when Joe suddenly stopped. “I think I heard a hollow echo around here,” he said. “Let’s start digging.”
    For the next half-hour the young detectives kept excavating the dirt until they hit wood. Straininghard, they managed to rip off the half-rotted boards and shone their lights into a dark pit. It was about twelve feet deep and completely empty!
    Joe groaned. “All this work for nothing!” he complained.
    â€œWait a minute,” Frank said. “If the old man went to this much trouble, there must be more to it. Maybe the gold was buried under the floor of the root cellar.”
    The boys hooked up the rope from Joe’s tool kit, slid down the twelve feet and began prodding the floor. It didn’t take long to find that same hollow sound again. But as they were tearing up the planking over the chamber, the rain began pouring into the root cellar. To make matters worse, the boys found that a groove in the ground that collected water ran down the hill right over the root cellar.
    Soon they stood ankle-deep in water and it was climbing.
    â€œWe’ll probably drown,” Joe said darkly. “Maybe we should heed the fortune-teller’s warning!”
    â€œYou really want to quit now?” Frank asked.
    â€œI suppose not,” the younger Hardy replied and tore away another board. Now they could see a small tunnel underneath, less than five feet high. It led up into the side of the hill, away from the flood.
    â€œThe old man designed this well,” Frank said. “Look, it’s nice and dry.”
    The boys lowered themselves into the tunnel and followed it to a turn about ten feet to the left. Slowly they crawled around the corner, when they suddenly heard a loud
crash!
    A bolt of thunder hit exactly at the moment when they came face-to-face with Simbu. They stared at the little figure that sat atop an