it won't last after sunset. I wish we'd asked
the Sammyadd why things don't turn to stone. Perhaps this will. I'll
tell you what, there's a pony and cart in the village."

"Do you want to buy that?" asked Jane.

"No, silly,--we'll _hire_ it. And then we'll go to Rochester and buy
heaps and heaps of things. Look here, let's each take as much as we can
carry. But it's not sovereigns. They've got a man's head on one side and
a thing like the ace of spades on the other. Fill your pockets with it,
I tell you, and come along. You can talk as we go--if you _must_ talk."

Cyril sat down and began to fill his pockets.

"You made fun of me for getting father to have nine pockets in my suit,"
said he, "but now you see!"

They did. For when Cyril had filled his nine pockets and his
handkerchief and the space between himself and his shirt front with the
gold coins, he had to stand up. But he staggered, and had to sit down
again in a hurry.

"Throw out some of the cargo," said Robert. "You'll sink the ship, old
chap. That comes of nine pockets."

And Cyril had to do so.

Then they set off to walk to the village. It was more than a mile, and
the road was very dusty indeed, and the sun seemed to get hotter and
hotter, and the gold in their pockets got heavier and heavier.

It was Jane who said, "I don't see how we're to spend it all. There must
be thousands of pounds among the lot of us. I'm going to leave some of
mine behind this stump in the hedge. And directly we get to the village
we'll buy some biscuits; I know it's long past dinner-time." She took
out a handful or two of gold and hid it in the hollows of an old
hornbeam. "How round and yellow they are," she said. "Don't you wish
they were made of gingerbread and we were going to eat them?"

"Well, they're not, and we're not," said Cyril. "Come on!"

But they came on heavily and wearily. Before they reached the village,
more than one stump in the hedge concealed its little hoard of hidden
treasure. Yet they reached the village with about twelve hundred guineas
in their pockets. But in spite of this inside wealth they looked
quite ordinary outside, and no one would have thought they could have
more than a half-crown each at the outside. The haze of heat, the blue
of the wood smoke, made a sort of dim misty cloud over the red roofs of
the village. The four sat down heavily on the first bench to which they
came. It happened to be outside the Blue Boar Inn.

[Illustrati