rk?" cried out Tom, almost screaming. "Why, that must mean the stake
yonder; that must be the mark." And he pointed to the oaken stick with
its red tip blazing against the white shimmer of sand behind it.

"And the 40 and 72 and 91," cried the old gentleman, in a voice equally
shrill--"why, that must mean the number of steps the pirate was counting
when you heard him."

"To be sure that's what they mean!" cried Tom Chist. "That is it, and
it can be nothing else. Oh, come, sir--come, sir; let us make haste and
find it!"

"Stay! stay!" said the good gentleman, holding up his hand; and again
Tom Chist noticed how it trembled and shook. His voice was steady
enough, though very hoarse, but his hand shook and trembled as
though with a palsy. "Stay! stay! First of all, we must follow these
measurements. And 'tis a marvelous thing," he croaked, after a little
pause, "how this paper ever came to be here."

"Maybe it was blown here by the storm," suggested Tom Chist.

"Like enough; like enough," said Parson Jones. "Like enough, after the
wretches had buried the chest and killed the poor black man, they were
so buffeted and bowsed about by the storm that it was shook out of the
man's pocket, and thus blew away from him without his knowing aught of
it."

"But let us find the box!" cried out Tom Chist, flaming with his
excitement.

"Aye, aye," said the good man; "only stay a little, my boy, until we
make sure what we're about. I've got my pocket compass here, but we must
have something to measure off the feet when we have found the peg. You
run across to Tom Brooke's house and fetch that measuring rod he used
to lay out his new byre. While you're gone I'll pace off the distance
marked on the paper with my pocket compass here."

VI

Tom Chist was gone for almost an hour, though he ran nearly all the
way and back, upborne as on the wings of the wind. When he returned,
panting, Parson Jones was nowhere to be seen, but Tom saw his footsteps
leading away inland, and he followed the scuffling marks in the smooth
surface across the sand humps and down into the hollows, and by and by
found the good gentleman in a spot he at once knew as soon as he laid
his eyes upon it.

It was the open space where the pirates had driven their first peg, and
where Tom Chist had afterward seen them kill the poor black man. Tom
Chist gazed around as though expecting to see some sign of the tragedy,
but the space was as smooth and as undisturbed