he
South.

Here he engaged in business, forsook his vagabond habits, and in course
of time married. No doubt it was always in his mind to have another try
at the treasure, but time slipped away without his doing so. His happy
marriage fettered him. Before he realized it, he was an old man. The
most he could do was to leave the secret for his daughter.

The package was found by his executor sealed in a safety deposit box. He
left instruction that it was to be opened by his daughter upon her
twenty-first birthday.

A week before the events told in the first chapter she had reached her
majority. In the presence of Boris Bothwell, whom she had lately met for
the first time, the oilcloth package had been opened.

He had agreed to finance the expedition to Doubloon Spit and she had
come to San Francisco with her aunt to make the voyage with him.
Meanwhile, letters had reached her from Scotland which made clear the
true character of Bothwell.

He had attempted twice to get possession of the map. His personal
attention displeased her. They had quarreled, finally, on the morning of
the episode of the second-story window.

CHAPTER V

WE FIND A SHIP

Partly from the diary of Robert Wallace and partly from the lips of his
daughter I gathered the story set down in the two preceding chapters.

If I have given it with some detail, believe me, it is not because I
care to linger over the shadow of tragedy that from the first hung about
the ill-gathered treasure, but rather that you may understand clearly
the issue facing us.

Some men would have turned their back upon the adventure and voted the
gold well lost. I wanted to see the thing out to a finish.

I shall never deny that the personality of her who was to be my partner
in the enterprise had something to do with the decision to which I came.
The low, sweet voice of the Southland, the gay, friendly eyes, the
piquant face, all young, all irresistibly eager and buoyant, would have
won a less emotional man than Jack Sedgwick.

But why make apologies? After all, every man that lives has his great
adventure, whether it come garbed in drab or radiant with the glow of
the sunrise. A prosaic, money-grubbing age we call this, but by the
gods! romance hammers once in a lifetime at the door of every mother's
son of us. There be those too niggardly to let her in, there be those to
whom the knock comes faintly; and there be a happy few who fling wide
the door and embrace