V.

Two or three days later I happened to meet Old Jacob as I was coming

away from the post-office in Lewes, and I was both pained and surprised

to perceive that the old man was partially intoxicated. When he caught

sight of me he came at me with such a lurch that had I not caught him

by the arm he certainly would have fallen to the ground. At first he

resented this friendly act on my part, but in a moment he forgot his

anger and insisted upon shaking hands with me with most energetic

warmth. Then he swayed his lips up to my ear, and asked in a hoarse

whisper if that old cousin chap of mine had got home safely the night

before; and wanted to know, with a most mysterious wink, if things was

all right _now_.

I was grieved at finding Old Jacob in this unseemly condition, and I

also was ruffled by his very rude reference to my cousin. I endeavored

to disengage my hand from his, and replied with some dignity that Mr.

Wilkinson at present was in New York, whither he had returned several

days previously. But Old Jacob declined to relinquish my hand, and,

with more mysterious winks, declared in a muzzy voice that I might trust

_him_, and that I needn't say that my cousin was in New York, when he

and him had been a-ridin' around together to the bay and back ag'in only

the day before. And then he went off into a rambling account of this

expedition, which in its main features resembled the expedition that

we all three had taken together, but which displayed certain curious

details as it advanced that I could not at all account for. By all odds

the most curious of these details was that they had taken along with

them a large tin vessel, Old Jacob's description of which tallied

strangely closely with that of the churn-wash-boiler, and that they had

left it behind them when they returned. But as he mixed this up with

a lot of stuff about having shown my cousin the course of an old creek

that a storm had filled with sand fifty years and more before, I could

not make head nor tail of it.

Yet somehow there really did seem to be more than mere drunken fancy in

what he was telling me; for in spite of his muzzy way of telling it, his

story had about it a curious air of truth; and yet it all was so utterly

preposterous that belief in it was quite out of the question. To

make matters worse, when I begged the old man to try to remember very

carefully whether or not he really had made a second trip to the bay,

or only was telling me about the trip that the three of us had made

together, he suddenly got very angry, and said that he supposed I

thought he was drunk, and if anybody was drunk I was, and he'd fight me

for five cents any time. And then he began to shake his old fists at

me, and to go on in such a boisterous way that, in order to avoid a very

unpleasant scene upon the public streets, I had to leave him and come

home.

When I told Susan the queer story that Old Jacob bad told me she was

as much perplexed and disturbed by it as I was. To think of Gregory

Wilkinson driving around the lower part of the State of Delaware in this

secret sort of way, in company with Old Jacob and the churn-wash-boiler,

as she very truly said, was like a horrible dream; and she asked me to

pinch her to make sure that it wasn't.

"But even pinching me don't prove anything," she said, when I had

performed that office for her. "For--don't you see?--I might dream that

I was dreaming, and asked you to pinch me, and that you did it; and I

suppose," she went on, meditatively, "that I might even dream that I

woke up when you pinched me, and yet that I might be sound asleep all

the while. It really is dreadfully confusing, when you come to think

of it, this way in which you can have dreams inside of each other, like

little Chinese boxes, and never truly know whether you're asleep or

awake. I don't like it at all."

Without meaning to, Susan frequently talks quite in the manner of a

German metaphysician.

The next day we received a letter from Gregory Wilkinson that we hoped,

as we opened it, would clear up the mystery. But before we had finished

it we were in such a state of excitement that we quite forgot that there

was any mystery to clear up. My cousin wrote from his home in New York,

and made no allusion whatever to a second visit to Lewes, still less to

a second expedition with Old Jacob to Rehoboth Bay. After speaking very

nicely of the pleasant time that he had passed with us, he continued:

"I enclose a memorandum that seems to have a bearing upon the

whereabouts of the hidden family fortune. I am sorry, for Susan's sake,

that it is neither invisible nor undecipherable; but I think that for

practical purposes visible ink and readable English are more useful. I

advise you to attend to the matter at once. It may rain."

The enclosure was a scrap of paper, so brown with age that it looked

as though it had been dipped in coffee, on which was written, in

astonishingly black ink, this brief but clear direction:

_Sheer uppe ye planke midwai atween ye oake and ye hiccorie saplyngs 7

fathom Est of Pequinky crik on ye baye. Ytte is all there_.

There was no date, no signature, to this paper, but neither

Susan nor I doubted for a moment that it was the clew to my

great-great-great-uncle's missing fortune. With a heart almost too full

for utterance, Susan went straight across the room to the big dictionary

(Gregory Wilkinson had given it to us at Christmas, with a handy iron

stand to keep in on), and in a trembling voice the dear child told me in

one single breath that a fathom was a measure of length containing six

feet or two yards, generally used in ascertaining the depth of the sea.

Then, without waiting to close the dictionary, she throw herself into my

arms and asked me to kiss her hard!

Susan wanted to start right off that afternoon--she was determined to

go with me this time, and I had not the heart to refuse her; but I

represented to her that night would be upon us before we could get

across to the bay, and that we had better wait till morning. But I at

once went over and hired the light wagon for the next day, and then we

got together the things which we deemed necessary for the expedition.

The tape-measure, of course, was a most essential part of the outfit.

Susan declared that she would take exclusive charge of that herself;

it made her feel that she was of importance, she said. During all the

evening she was quite quivering with excitement--and so was I, for that

matter--and I don't believe that we slept forty winks apiece all night

long.

We were up bright and early, and got off before seven o'clock--after

Susan had given the colored girl a great many directions as to what she

should and should not do while we were gone. This was the first time

that we ever had left the colored girl alone in the house for a whole

day, and Susan could not help feeling rather anxious about her. It would

be dreadful, she said, to come home at night and find her bobbing up and

down dead at the bottom of the well.

As we drew near the bay I asked several people whom we happened to meet

along the road if they knew where Pequinky Creek was, and I was rather

surprised to find that they all said they didn't. At last, however,

we were so fortunate as to meet with quite an old man who was able

to direct us. He seemed to be a good deal astonished when I put the

question to him, but he answered, readily:

"Yes, yes, o' course I knows where 'tis--'tain't nowhere. Why, young

man, there hain't ben any Pequinky Crik fur th' better part o' sixty

year--not sence thet gret May storm druv th' bay shore right up on eend

an' dammed th' crik short off, an' turned all th' medders thereabouts

inter a gret nasty ma'sh, an' med a new outlet five mile an' more away

t' th' west'ard. Not a sign o' Pequinky Crik will you find at this

day--an' w'at I should like ter know is w'ere on yeth a young feller

like you ever s' much as heerd tell about it."

This was something that I had not counted on, and I could see that Susan

was feeling very low in her mind. But by questioning the old man closely

I gradually got a pretty clear notion of where the mouth of the creek

used to be; and I concluded that, unless the oak and hickory had been

cut down or washed away, I stood a pretty good chance of finding the

spot that I was in search of. Susan did not take this hopeful view of

the situation. She was very melancholy.

Following the old man's directions, I drove down to the point on the

road that was nearest to where the Pequinky in former times had emptied

into the bay; then I hitched the horse to a tree, and with Susan and the

tape-measure began my explorations, They lasted scarcely five minutes.

With no trouble at all I found the oak and the hickory--grown to be

great trees, as I had expected--and with the tape-measure we fixed the

point midway between them in no time. Then I went back to the wagon for

the spade and the other things, Susan going along and dancing around and

around me in sheer delight. It is a fortunate trait of Susan's character

that while her spirits sometimes do fall a very long distance in a

very short time, they rise to proportionate heights with proportionate

rapidity.

The point that we had fixed between the trees was covered thickly with

leaves, and when I had cleared these away and had begun to dig, I was

surprised to find that the soil came up freely, and was not matted

together with roots as wood soil ought to be. I should have paid more

attention to this curious fact, no doubt, had I not been so profoundly

stirred by the excitement incident to the strange work in which I was

engaged. As for Susan, the dear creature said that she had creeps all

over her, for she knew that the old pirate's ghost must be hovering

near, and she begged me to notify her when I came to the skeleton, so

that she might look away. I told her that I did not expect to find a

skeleton, but she replied that this only showed how ignorant _I_ was of

pirate ceremonial; that it was the rule with all pirates when burying

treasure to sacrifice a human life, and to bury the dead body over the

hidden gold. She admitted, however--upon my drawing her attention to the

fact that the treasure which we were in the act of digging up had been

placed here by my relative only for temporary security--that in this

particular instance the human sacrifice part of the pirate programme

might have been omitted.

Just as we had reached this conclusion--which disappointed Susan a

little, I think--my spade struck with a heavy thud against a piece of

wood. Clearing the earth away, I disclosed some fragments of rotten

plank, and beneath these I saw something that glittered! Susan, standing

beside me on the edge of the hole, saw the glitter too. She did not say

one word; she simply put both her arms around my neck and kissed me.

I rapidly removed the loose earth, and then with the pickaxe I heaved

the plank up bodily. But what we saw when the plank came away was not

a chest full of doubloons, pieces-of-eight, moidores, and other such

ancient coins, mingled with golden ornaments thickly studded with

precious stones; no, we saw the very bright lid of a tin box, a circular

box, rather more than two feet in diameter. There was a small round

hole in the centre of the lid, into which a little roll of newspaper

was stuffed--presumably to keep the sand out--and beside this hole I

noticed, soldered fast to the lid, a small brass plate on which my eye

caught the word "Patented." It was strange enough to find the tin box in

such perfect preservation while the stout oak plank above it had rotted

into fragments; but the wisp of newspaper, and the brass plate with its

utterly out-of-place inscription, were absolutely bewildering. My head

seemed to be going around on my shoulders, while something inside of it

was buzzing dreadfully. Suddenly Susan exclaimed, in a tone of disgust

and consternation: "It's--it's that perfectly horrid churn-wash-boiler!"

As she spoke these doomful words I recalled Old Jacob's drunken story,

which I now perceived must have been true, and the dreadful thought

flashed into my mind that Gregory Wilkinson must have gone crazy, and

that this dreary practical joke was the first result of his madness.

Susan meanwhile had sunk down by the side of the hole and was weeping

silently.

As a vent to my outraged feelings I gave the wretched tin vessel a

tremendous poke with the spade, that caved in one side of it and knocked

the lid off. I then perceived that within it was an oblong package

carefully tied up in oiled silk, and on bending down to examine the

package more closely I perceived that it was directed to Susan. With a

dogged resolve to follow out Gregory Wilkinson's hideous pleasantry

to the bitter end, I lifted the package out of the box--it was pretty

heavy--and began to open it. Inside the first roll of the cover was a

letter that also was directed to Susan. She had got up by this time, and

read it over my shoulder.

"My dear Susan,--I have decided not to wait until I die to

do what little good I can do in the world. You will be glad,

I am sure, to learn that I have made arrangements for the

immediate erection of the steam-laundry at the asylum, as

well as for the material improvement in several other ways

of that excellent institution.

"At the same time I desire that you and your husband shall

have the benefit immediately of the larger portion of the

legacy that I always have intended should be yours at my

death. It is here (in govt. 4's), and I hope with all my

heart that your trip to Europe will be a pleasant one. I am

very affectionately yours,

"Gregory Wilkinson."

"And to think," said Susan--as we drove home through the twilight,

bearing our sheaves with us and feeling very happy over them--"and to

think that it should turn out to be your cousin Gregory Wilkinson

who was the family pirate and had a hoard, and not your

great-great-great-uncle, after all!"