"Possibly--though I don't recall it. Suppose you are attacked and
tortured till you reveal where you've hidden the jewels?" she
insisted.

"I cannot suppose them so unreasonable!" he laughed, again. "However, I
put Moses on guard--with a big revolver and orders to fire at anyone
molesting the house. If we hear a fusillade we'll know it's he shooting
up the neighborhood."

"Then the same idea _did_ suggest itself to you!"

"Only to the extent of searching for the jewels--I regarded that as
vaguely possible, but there isn't the slightest danger of any one being
tortured."

"You know best, I suppose," she said--"but you've had your warning--and
pirate's gold breeds pirate's ways. You've given up all hope of finding
the treasure--abandoned jewels worth--how many dollars?"

"Possibly half a million," he filled in.

"Without a further search? Oh! Mr. Croyden!"

"If you can suggest what to do--anything which hasn't been done, I
shall be only too glad to consider it."

"You say you dug up the entire Point for a hundred yards inland?"

"We did."

"And dredged the Bay for a hundred yards?"

"Yes."

She puckered her brows in thought. He regarded her with an amused
smile.

"I don't see what you're to do, except to do it all over again," she
announced--"Now, don't laugh! It may sound foolish, but many a thing
has been found on a second seeking--and this, surely, is worth a
second, or a third, or even many seekings."

"If there were any assurance of ultimate success, it would pay to spend
a lifetime hunting. The two essentials, however, are wanting: the
extreme tip of Greenberry Point in 1720, and the beech-trees. We made
the best guess at their location. More than that, the zone of
exploration embraced every possible extreme of territory--yet, we
failed. It will make nothing for success to try again."

"But it is somewhere!" she reflected.

"Somewhere, in the Bay!--It's shoal water, for three or four hundred
feet around the Point, with a rock bottom. The Point itself has been
eaten into by the Bay, down to this rock. Parmenter's chest disappeared
with the land in which it was buried, and no man will find it now,
except by accident."

"It seems such a shame!" she exclaimed. "A fortune gone to waste!"

"Without anyone having the fun of wasting it!" laughed Croyden.

She took up Parmenter's letter again, and glanced over it. Then she
handed it back, and shook her head.

"It's too much for my poor brain," she