Jennifer Jane and the treasure 1/5

"I hope tomorrow's a nice day," said Dad when he came home on Friday. "We need to tidy up the garden before winter really comes. Would you like to help me with it?"

Jennifer Jane said she'd love to.

“It's going to be a beautiful day,” Dad said after breakfast the next morning, "let's get out of your Mother's way and start on the garden.

Jennifer Jane walked along to the end of the garden with her Dad to a place where an old tree had blown down in the gales. He’d already cut the branches from the trunk and put them in tidy piles and now he was going to dig out the stump and roots, to make the ground ready again for planting.

He started to shovel the earth away from the tree stump. Jennifer Jane looked round at the garden. It certainly was a lovely day, a little cold when you were just standing still but it was very sunny without a cloud in the sky.

"Pass me the pickaxe, please," said Dad. Jennifer Jane handed it over and watched him loosen some of the earth.

"Hello, we've got a large root here that I'll have to cut through," he said and he started to swing the pickaxe with all his strength. Chip-chip-chip, it went, bits of root flying in all directions.

Suddenly .... chip-chip-clang.

"Gosh," said Dad, "I've hit something really hard there!" He got down on his hands and knees and started to move the earth away with his hands.

"Why, it's an old iron box! It must have been buried here a long time ago when this tree was young. I wouldn't be surprised if it was valuable."

He loosened some more earth round the box and lifted it out of the hole. It wasn't very big and it was covered in rust and dirt. It had a rounded lid, just like the treasure chests you see in pirate pictures and a long spike sticking from the bottom.

"It's an old jewellery box," said Dad, who knew about such things. "A long time ago, people would lock up their jewels and valuables in one of these boxes and carry them on their journeys. When they stopped at an inn for the night, they would open the lid and screw the bottom of the box to the floor by the bed, then close the lid and lock it. Then nobody could take the box away without breaking it open first to unscrew it from the floor."

"That's what the spike is, sticking out from the bottom," said Jennifer Jane. "It's really a screw but it's gone all rusty."

"That's right. Now then, I'll put it back in the hole and get a friend of mine who is an expert on such things to come and see it. They like to know exactly how buried things are placed in the ground, because they can learn a lot from knowing how deep it was."

He put the box back in the proper place in the hole and patted some earth over the top. “We'll leave this stump until Mr. Saunders can come over and see the box, so let's saw up some of the branches into logs."

Jennifer Jane helped him with the big two handed saw, cutting up the old branches into little logs, putting them in a barrow and taking them back to the house to burn during the coming Winter.

Just before teatime, as it started to get dark, they went indoors very tired but very pleased with themselves.

"That was a jolly good day's work. Thanks for all your help. I'll just ring Mr Saunders to tell him about our treasure chest and then we'll all have tea."

Mum had got a lovely tea ready for the hungry workers and listened to Jennifer Jane and her Father while they both talked at once about their exciting find.

"We don't know what's in it yet, of course," said Dad "but it must be worth something, or the original owner wouldn't have buried it all those years ago. My friend from the museum can't wait to come and see it. He says he'll come over tomorrow morning and make some notes and then we can open it and see what's inside."

At last Mum managed to get a word in edgeways. "I wonder if we'll be able to keep whatever's inside? It must be gold or jewellery."

Dad wasn't sure. "The law on treasure trove is very strange," he said "but we could be lucky."