nothing," said the man, leaning on his axe. "The Navy's
got a 'speriment house over here. They're trying things. Yer don't
need be skeered. If yer goin' to the station, it's just a little ways,
now," he added, with the country-man's curiosity--which they did not
satisfy.

They passed the buildings of the Experiment Station and continued on,
amid pine and dogwood, elms and beeches. They were travelling parallel
with the Severn, and not very distant, as occasional glimpses of blue
water, through the trees, revealed. Gradually, the timber thinned. The
river became plainly visible with the Bay itself shimmering to the
fore. Then the trees ended abruptly, and they came out on Greenberry
Point: a long, flat, triangular-shaped piece of ground, possibly two
hundred yards across the base, and three hundred from base to point.

The two men halted, and looked around.

"Somewhere near here, possibly just where your horse is standing, is
the treasure," said Macloud. "Can't you feel its presence?"

"No, I can't!" laughed Croyden, "and that appears to be my only chance,
for I can't see a trace of the trees which formed the square."

"Be not cast down!" Macloud admonished. "Remember, you didn't expect to
find things marked off for you."

"No, _I_ didn't! but I thought _you_ did."

"That was only to stir you up. I anticipated even more adverse
conditions. It's amazingly easier than I dared to hope."

"Thunder! man! we can't dig six feet deep over all of forty acres. We
shall have the whole of Annapolis over to help us before we've done a
square of forty feet."

"You're too liberal!" laughed Macloud. "Twenty feet would be ample."
Then he sobered. "The instructions say: seven hundred and fifty feet
back, from the extreme tip of Greenberry Point, is the quadrangle of
trees. That was in 1720, one hundred and ninety years ago. They must
have been of good size then--hence, they would be of the greater size,
now, or else have disappeared entirely. There isn't a single tree which
could correspond with Parmenter's, closer than four hundred yards, and,
as the point would have been receding rather than gaining, we can
assume, with tolerable certainty, that the beeches have
vanished--either from decay or from wind storms, which must be very
severe over in this exposed land. Hence, must not our first quest be
for some trace of the trees?"

"That sounds reasonable," said Croyden, "and, if the Point has receded,
which is altogether likely