is for, Joan? Why, we're here for our health." His teeth
bit on the cigar with enjoyable emphasis.

"If you don't tell me what's in the wind, you'll be sorry. Come, where's
the good? I've got as much head as you have, father, and--"

"Mon Dieu! Much more. That's not the question. It was to be a surprise
to you."

"Pshaw! You can only have one minute of surprise, and you can have
months of fun looking out for a thing. I don't want surprises; I want
what you've got--the thing that's kept you good-tempered while we lie
here like snails on the rocks."

"Well, my cricket, if that's the way you feel, here you are. It is a
long story, but I will make it short. Once there was a pirate called
Brigond, and he brought into a bay on the coast of Labrador a fortune in
some kegs--gold, gold! He hid it in a cave, wrapping around it the dead
bodies of two men. It is thought that one can never find it so. He hid
it, and sailed away. He was captured, and sent to prison in France for
twenty years. Then he come back with a crew and another ship, and sailed
into the bay, but his ship went down within sight of the place. And so
the end of him and all. But wait. There was one man, the mate on the
first voyage. He had been put in prison also. He did not get away as
soon as Brigond. When he was free, he come to the captain of a ship that
I know, the Free-and-Easy, that sails to Havre, and told him the story,
asking for passage to Quebec. The captain--Gobal--did not believe it,
but said he would bring him over on the next voyage. Gobal come to me
and told me all there was to tell. I said that it was a true story, for
Pretty Pierre told me once he saw Brigond's ship go down in the bay; but
he would not say how, or why, or where. Pierre would not lie in a thing
like that, and--"

"Why didn't he get the gold himself?"

"What is money to him? He is as a gipsy. To him the money is cursed. He
said so. Eh bien! some wise men are fools, one way or another. Well,
I told Gobal I would give the man the Ninety-Nine for the cruise and
search, and that we should divide the gold between us, if it was found,
taking out first enough to make a dot for you and a fine handful for
Bissonnette. But no, shake not your head like that. It shall be so. Away
went Gobal four months ago, and I get a letter from him weeks past, just
after Pentecost, to say he would be here some time in the first of July,
with the man.

"Well, it is a great game. The man is a pirate,