ng one who is to disappear--if he
had but known it!--before that howling night--

"Twas in '52 she grounded," said he, transferring something from his
right cheek to his left. "Hang me on the Union Jack," (that was a
nautical expression by which Peeler added solemnity to his statement)
"if there was not exactly one million Spanish doubloons on board."

Sep whistled, but immediately checked himself, and sat down on the wind
to hear the rest.

"Bust my buttons if mortal man knows where she lies!" continued Peeler,
"save and except yours 'umbly. Stand by, my shaver, and cast your cock-
eye on this bit of rag."

And he produced from his pocket a greasy piece of parchment with a map
upon it.

"There," said he, laying his broad thumb on a red cross somewhere in the
West Pacific, "there she lies--full of gold, my boy. Shiver my jury-
masts if she don't."

The wind on which Sep was sitting lifted him to his feet, as he grasped
the map and gazed with quivering excitement on the mysterious red mark.

He laughed sardonically, and the perspiration stood in beads on his
brow. Then, pushing Peeler over the cliff, he put the map in his
pocket, and walked on whistling in the night air to the cottage.

Sub-Chapter II.

THE SMILE.

"My own Velvetina!"

"Sep, my pet!"

"Can it really be?"

"Even so."

A silence, during which a pair of tangled eyelashes are dim with humid
dew. Then--

"Did you meet daddy on the cliff, pet?"

He turned ashy white, even in the darkness, and recoiled several yards
at the unexpected inquiry.

"Where?" at last he gasped, prevaricatingly.

"Then you saw him not!" cried she, "and he is out alone on this wild
night; and only his thin socks on."

"Really?" replies Sep, "let me go and look for him."

He crushed her lily hand lovingly in his own and went. But he turned to
the left at the end of the lane, and with scarcely half a dozen bounds
reached the railway station, grasping the map and murmuring to himself,
"My Velvy!" all the way.

Any one who could have seen that happy boy's face at the window of the
second-class carriage, as the train steamed majestically out of the
station, would scarcely have dreamed of the deep meaning concealed
beneath that ingenuous smile.

Smile on, Septimus, yet beware! The sleuth-hound is already on the
track!

Sub-Chapter III.

THE SLEUTH-HOUND.

Solomon Smellie, of Scotland Yard, had yet his way to make in the world.
He was not exactly you