ole in this rocky
surface, and prying away with a handspike had unloosed a small mass of
rock and discovered a cave; not much of a cave, it is true, but one of
at least twenty feet in length and eight or ten in breadth, and full six
feet in height. This discovery occurred a year or two before John felt
the grip of any stimulant. He had forgotten all about it until there
came to him the idea of drinking better whisky than did other people.

John had sold a yoke of oxen and a Blackhawk colt, and two hundred
dollars in gold were resting heavily in his little cherry-wood desk in
the farm-house sitting-room. One day he took ten of these gold-pieces
and went to town; not to the cross-roads, but to the larger place, some
ten miles distant, where was a distillery, and there he bought two
barrels of whisky. Whisky in those days, before the time of present
taxes, was sold from the distillery at prices ranging from thirty-five
to fifty cents a gallon, about forty-seven gallons to a barrel. The team
of horses dragged wearily home the heavy load; but they did not stop
when home was reached, either in front of the house or at the barn-yard
gate. Instead, they were turned aside through a rude gate leading into
the flats, and thence drew the load to the mouth of the little cave,
where, unseen by any one, Appleman tilted the barrels out and left them
lying on the sward.

Other things had been bought in town that day, and Appleman had no
difficulty in giving reasons for the lateness of his home-coming. Next
day, though, he was a busy man. By the exercise of main strength, and
the leverage afforded with a strong ironwood handspike, he succeeded in
rolling both those barrels into the cave and uptilting them, and leaving
them standing high and dry. The cave was as dry as a bone. He noted with
satisfaction the overhanging clay bank above, and felt that if he were
to be called away his treasure would be safe, since the opening would
doubtless soon be hidden from the sight of anybody. When he went to bed
that night he thought much of the hidden barrels.

An incident has been neglected in this account. When John Appleman
bought those barrels, the son of the distiller, a boy of ten, was told
to see that two designated barrels were rolled out from the storeroom.
The boy marked them, utilizing the great chunk of red chalk which every
country boy carried in his pocket some forty years ago. Furthermore,
being a boy and having time to waste, he dec