, in
an agony of restlessness--a very pitiable old man.

George spoke up from the ground.

"Find what?" said he, feeling all sopped and dazed.

"The box--the casket! It could never perish. It was of sheet-iron. Look,
look, my friend! Your eyes are younger than mine--a box, a foot long, of
hard iron!"

"I am sitting upon something hard," said George.

He sprang to his feet and took the lanthorn.

"Bones," said he, peering down. "Some old mastodon, I expect. Is this
your treasure?"

De Jussac was glaring. His head drooped lower and lower. His lips were
parted, and the line of strong white teeth showed between them. His
voice, when he spoke, was quite fearful in its low intensity.

"Bones--yes, and human. Where they lie, the other must be near. Ah,
Lacombe, Lacombe; you will yield me my own at last!"

He was shaking a slow finger at the poor remnants--a rib or two, the half
of a yellow skull.

Suddenly he was down on his knees, tearing at the black, thick soil,
diving into it, tossing it hither and thither.

A pause, a rending exclamation, and he was on his feet again with a
scream of ecstasy. An oblong casket, rusty, corroded, but unbroken, was
in his hand.

"Now," he whispered, sibilant through the wind, controlling himself,
though he was shaking from head to foot, "now to return as we have come.
Not a word, not a word till we have this safe in the cottage!"

They found, after some search, a difficult way up. By-and-by they stood
once more on the lip of the fall, and paused for breath.

It was at this very instant that De Jussac dropped the box beside him and
threw up his hands.

"The guillotine!" he shrieked, and fell headlong into the pit he had just
issued from.

IV

The poor bandaged figure; the approaching death; the dog whining softly
in the yard.

"I am dying, my little Plancine?"

The girl's forehead was bowed on the homely quilt.

"Nay, cry not, little one! I go very happy. That (he indicated by a
motion of his eyelids the fatal box, which, yet unopened, lay on a table
by the sunny window) shall repay thee for thy long devotion, for thy
poverty, and for thy brave sweetness with the old papa."

"No, no, no!"

"But they are diamonds, Plancine--such diamonds, my bird. They have
flashed at Versailles, at the little Trianon. They were honoured to lie
on the breast of a beautiful and courageous woman--thine aunt, Plancine;
the most noble the Comtesse de la Morne. She gave her weal