ll be on velvet."

My heart sank, because I saw Pat in her last ditch, and presently turned
out of it with nowhere else to go unless she married for money. She was
in such a state of rapture at recovering Larry after all her fears, that
I thought she would cheerfully consent to anything he advised, but there
must have been a sensible ancestor behind the girl somewhere. "Oh, I
wish we needn't mortgage Kidd's Pines!" she sighed. "It is such a dear
place. I'd almost forgotten--but such a rush of love has come over me
for it to-day. I'd hate to risk losing it--and we might, you know.
There's another plan that some kind friends from the ship thought of
this morning, when--when we heard the news--about our trouble. They're
coming to Awepesha to talk it over, at four o'clock this afternoon."

She turned an imploring glance on Jack, who thereupon felt forced to
help her out with explanations. He stumbled a little, for fear of
hurting Mr. Moore's pride; but he needn't have worried. Larry regarded
the idea as the joke of the century.

"Great Scott, what a lark!" he shouted. "I can see the advertisements!
'Hiding place of Captain Kidd's Treasure in the Grounds.' What do you
know about _that_? Jove, we'll have digging parties, with me for the
leader!"

"You must make them _pay_ for the privilege of digging," I suggested.

"Yes! We'll call it the 'Only Extra.' I like the idea of that
man--Storm, did you say his name is?--of charging some high, almost
prohibitive price which limits the scope of operation to millionaires,
then letting them have everything they want, as if they were guests:
champagne or water, the same charge. We ought to get some fun out of
this--what?"

I thanked Billiken, the God of Things as They Ought to Be, that he took
it that way, for, if only Larry didn't insist on managing the business
himself, I saw hope of Pat's being saved.

Our chauffeur, looking more like Hyde than Jekyll after his long wait,
took us all back to Awepesha in the car, after Larry had changed his
telltale clothes to tweeds, and the ruined bankrupt was the life of the
party. His remarks about the expression of Angele's back (she sat in
front) and his friend the Marquise's taste in female beauty were most
witty and amusing, if not in the best of taste.

I forgot to tell you that Ed Caspian brought his car down to the docks
to take Mrs. Shuster wherever she wanted to go--a resplendent car of the
most expensive make in the world, such