"Well, then," I says, "if we don't want the picks and shovels, what do we want?"

     "A couple of case-knives."

     "To dig the foundations out from under that cabin with?"

     "Yes."

     "Confound it, it's foolish, Tom."

     "It don't make no difference how foolish it is, it's the RIGHT way--and it's the regular way. And there ain't no OTHER way, that ever I heard of, and I've read all the books that gives any information about these things. They always dig out with a case-knife--and not through dirt, mind you; generly it's through solid rock. And it takes them weeks and weeks and weeks, and for ever and ever. Why, look at one of them prisoners in the bottom dungeon of the Castle Deef, in the harbor of Marseilles, that dug himself out that way; how long was HE at it, you reckon?"

     "I don't know."

     "Well, guess."

     "I don't know. A month and a half."