Three days, he thought—or was it four?

“If we don’t do something about it,” he said, “that fool dog is going to get himself wore out.”

He went into the garage and came back with two shovels and a pick.

“Come on,” he said to Beasly. “We have to put a stop to this before we have any peace.”

Towser had done himself a noble job of excavation. He was almost completely out of sight. Only the end of his considerably bedraggled tail showed out of the hole he had clawed in the forest floor.

Beasly had been right about the tanklike thing. One edge of it showed out of one side of the hole.

Towser backed out of the hole and sat down heavily, his whiskers dripping clay, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.

“He says that it’s about time that we showed up,” said Beasly.

Taine walked around the hole and knelt down. He reached down a hand to brush the dirt off the projecting edge of Beasly’s tank. The clay was stubborn and hard to wipe away, but from the feel of it the tank was heavy metal.

Taine picked up a shovel and rapped it against the tank. The tank gave out a clang.

They got to work, shoveling away a foot or so of topsoil that lay above the object. It was hard work and the thing was bigger than they had thought and it took some time to get it uncovered, even roughly.

“I’m hungry,” Beasly complained.

Taine glanced at his watch. It was almost one o’clock.

“Run on back to the house,” he said to Beasly. “You’ll find something in the refrigerator and there’s milk to drink.”

“How about you, Hiram? Ain’t you ever hungry?”

“You could bring me back a sandwich and see if you can find a trowel.”

“What you want a trowel for?”

“I want to scrape the dirt off this thing and see what it is.”