red spots
glowed in Moira's cheeks, and in her eyes was an opalescent glow that
spoke of suppressed excitement. I wasn't so carried away by my feelings
as the others were--I had been trained in a rough school, and my
training had taught me at all times to keep an adequate control over my
emotions--but the romance of the adventure and the excitement of the
game had penetrated even my thick skin, and the mere fact that others
hung breathlessly on my movements swayed me a little from the normal.
That streak of vanity which is in all of us came to the surface, as it
does with the best of men at the best of times.

I didn't see how I could possibly make a mistake, and the only thing
that troubled me was the likelihood of some stray prospector having
stumbled on the hoard by accident. At last I reached the spot where the
north line ended, and then calmly and methodically I took off my coat,
folded it, and laid it on the ground. I rolled up my shirt sleeves and
seized the spade in my hands. The others watched me with apprehensive
eyes.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ADVENTURE CLOSES.

I could hear Moira's quick breaths come and go as I worked, and with
each shovelful of soil I turned Cumshaw craned his head a little further
forward.

"Three foot, maybe three foot six," Cumshaw said once, in a voice that
was curiously hoarse. The remark puzzled me for a moment, and then in a
flash I recollected that his father had told Bryce that the hole where
the gold was buried would be three feet or three feet six deep at a
guess.

I went on digging. The hole deepened and widened, and still nothing
appeared. I paused in my work and flung the damp perspiration from my
forehead with a grimy hand. I had been working eagerly, excitedly.

"I'll take a hand now," Cumshaw offered with surprising alacrity.

I shook my head and stabbed the spade further into the earth. It struck
something soft which yet offered a remarkable resistance to the progress
of the instrument. And then in an instant I was down on my knees, the
steaming sting of my perspiring face all forgotten in the wild intense
eagerness of my discovery. I flung the spade about like a mad-man, and
my breath came and went through my teeth with a hissing sound like that
of escaping steam. I was mud and muck from head to foot and my hands
were caked with clay, but that did not matter. Nothing mattered save the
one startling fact that I had struck something that answered to the
descri