ty in talk.

"What does he want, this 'white'?" they asked, suspiciously.

"Like all whites," answered Stuart, striving to talk in the character of
the negro horse-boy, "he wants something he has no right to have."

"And what is that?"

"Information. He says he is a military strategist, and is going to make
La Ferriere, up there, a modern fort."

"He will never get there," said one of the soldiers.

"You think not?"

"It is sure that he will not get there. Permission is refused always,
Yes. The General is afraid lest a 'white' should find the buried money."

"Christophe's treasure?" queried the boy, innocently. He had never heard
of this treasure before, but rightly guessed that if it were supposed to
be hidden in the Citadel of the Black Emperor, it must have been placed
there by no one but the grim old tyrant himself.

"But surely. Yes. You, in the south"--Stuart had volunteered the
information that he came from the southern part of the island--"have
you not heard the story of Dimanche (Sunday) Esnan?"

"I never heard it, No," Stuart answered.

"It was of strange, Yes," the soldier proceeded. "Christophe was rich,
ah, how rich! He had all the money of the republic. He spent it like an
emperor. You shall see for yourself, if you look, what Christophe spent
in building palaces, but no one shall say how much he spent on his own
pleasures. He had a court, like the great courts of Europe, and not a
'white' in them. Ah, he was very rich and powerful, Christophe. It is
said that, when he died, he left 65,000,000 gourdes (then worth about
$15,000,000) and this he buried, should he need money in order to
escape. But, as even an ignorant like you will know, he did not escape."

"I know," replied Stuart, "he blew out his brains."

"Right over there, he did it!" the soldier agreed, pointing into the
night. "But listen to the story of the treasure:

"When I was but a little older than a boy like you, into the Vache d'Or
(a former gambling-house of some fame) there strolled this Dimanche
Esnan. He swaggered in, as one with plenty of money in his pocket.

"Upon the table he threw some coins.

"The croupier stared down at those coins, with eyes as cold and fixed as
those of a fer-de-lance ready to strike. The play at the table stopped.

"It was a moment!

"The coins were Spanish doubloons!"

"A pirate hoard?" suggested Stuart.

"It was thought. But this Dimanche had not been off the island for
years! And the b