e repeated.
"Child, a conscience like yours is top-heavy. Still, I'll mull it over. I
can't take 'em to the grave with me, that's a fact. But my ghost is bound
to get leg-weary doing the rounds to view them again. What do you say,
Denny?"

"If you don't, I will!"

Cleigh chuckled.

"That makes it unanimous. I'll put it in the codicil. But while I live!
Benson, what did these men look like? One of them limp?"

"No, sir. Ordinary trucking men, I should say, sir."

"The infernal scoundrel! No message?"

"No, sir. The man who rang the bell said he had some cases for you, and
asked where he should put them. I thought the hall the best place, sir,
temporarily."

"The infernal scoundrel!"

"What the dickens is the matter with you, Father!" demanded Dennison.
"You've got back the loot."

"But how? The story, Denny! The rogue leaves me 'twixt wind and water as
to how he got out of this hole."

"Maybe he was afraid you still wanted his hide," suggested Jane, now
immeasurably happy.

"He did it!" said Cleigh, his sense of amazement awakening. "One chance in
a thousand, and he caught that chance! But never to know how he did it!"

"Aren't you glad now," said Jane, "that you let him go?"

Cleigh chuckled.

"There!" she exclaimed, clapping her hands. "Just as he said! He
prophesied that some day you would chuckle over it. He found his pearls.
He knew he would find them! The bell!" she broke off, startled.

Never had Benson, the butler, witnessed such an exhibition of undignified
haste. Cleigh, Jane, and Dennison, all three of them started for the door
at once, jostling. What they found was only a bedraggled messenger boy,
for it was now raining.

"Mr. Cleigh," said the boy, grumpily, as he presented a letter and a small
box. "No answer."

"Where is the man who sent you?" asked Jane, tremendously excited.

"De office pushed me on dis job, miss. Dey said maybe I'd git a good tip
if I hustled."

Dennison thrust a bill into the boy's hand and shunted him forth into the
night again.

The letter was marked Number One and addressed to Cleigh; the box was
marked Number Two and addressed to Jane.

Mad, thought Benson, as he began to gather up the loose excelsior; quite
mad, the three of them.

With Jane at one shoulder and Dennison at the other, Cleigh opened his
letter. The first extraction was a chart. An atoll; here were groups of
cocoanut palm, there of plantain; a rudely drawn hut. In the lagoon at a
point