ory Wilkinson came all right, and after
supper--he said that it was the nicest supper he had eaten in a long
while--she did the honors of the Swallow's Nest in the pretty way that
is her especial peculiarity. She showed him the cow-stable, with the cow
in it, and the colored girl milking away in her usual vigorous fashion,
the chickens, the garden, the peach-trees, and the nest under the eaves
where the swallows had lived when we first came there. Then, as it grew
dark, we sat on the little veranda while we smoked our cigars--that is,
Gregory Wilkinson and I smoked: all that Susan did was to try to poke
her finger through the rings which I blew towards her--and I told why we
had come down there, and what a good start we had made towards finding
my great-great-great-uncle's buried money. And when I had got through,
Susan told how, as soon as I had found it, we were going to Europe.

We neither of us thought that Gregory Wilkinson manifested as much
enthusiasm in the matter as the circumstances of the case demanded; but
then, as Susan pointed out to me, in her usual clear-headed way, it was
not reasonable to expect a man with a fortune to be as eager to get one
as a man without one would be.

"Very likely he'll give us his share for finding it," said Susan; "he
don't want it himself, and it would be dreadful to turn the heads of all
those destitute red Indian children by leaving it to them."

I should have mentioned earlier that, so far as we knew, my cousin and I
were my great-great-great-uncle's only surviving heirs. The family
luck had not held out any especially strong temptations in the way of
pleasant things to live for, and so the family gradually had died off.
Whatever my search should bring to light, therefore, would be divided
between us two.

By the time that Old Jacob got through with his boat-painting, Gregory
Wilkinson had gathered a sufficient interest in our money-digging to
volunteer to go along with us to the bay. We had a two-seated wagon,
and I took with me several things which I thought might be useful in
an expedition of this nature--two spades, a pickaxe, a crow-bar, a
measuring tape that belonged to Susan, an axe, and a lantern (for, as
Susan very truly said, we might have to do some of our digging after
dark). I took also a pulley and a coil of rope, in case the box of
treasure should prove so heavy that we could not otherwise pull it out
from the hole. Old Jacob knew all about rigging tackle,