d gravely
agreed that further excavation would be futile. The French treasure
seekers went elsewhere and then a peasant girl confused the savants by
discovering what was undeniably a part of the lost riches of Gourdon.
She was driving home the cows from a pasture of the abbey lands when a
shower caused her to take shelter in a hollow scooped out of a
sand-bank by laborers mending the road. Some of the earth caved in
upon her and while she was freeing herself, down rolled a salver, a
paten, and a flagon, all of pure gold, richly chased and studded with
emeralds and rubies. These articles were taken to Paris and advertised
for sale by auction, the Government bidding them in and placing them in
the museum of the Bibliotheque.

During the reign of Napoleon III there died a very famous treasure
seeker, one Ducasse, who believed that he was about to discover "the
master treasure" (_le maitre tresor_) said to be among the ruins of the
ancient Belgian Abbey of Orval. Ducasse was a builder by trade and had
gained a large fortune in government contracts every sou of which he
wasted in exploring at Orval. It was alleged that the treasure had
been buried by the monks and that the word NEMO carved on the tomb of
the last abbott held the key to the location of the hiding-place.

In Mexico one hears similar tales of vast riches buried by religious
orders when menaced by war or expulsion. One of these is to be found
in the south-western part of the state of Chihuahua where a great gorge
is cut by the Rio Verde. In this remote valley are the ruins of a
church built by the Jesuits, and when they were about to be driven from
their settlement they sealed up and destroyed all traces of a
fabulously rich mine in which was buried millions of bullion. Instead
of the more or less stereotyped ghosts familiar as sentinels over
buried treasure, these lost hoards of Mexico are haunted by a specter
even more disquieting than phantom pirates or "little black men." It
is "The Weeping Woman" who makes strong men cross themselves and shiver
in their serapes, and many have heard or seen her. A member of a party
seeking buried treasure in the heart of the Sierra Madre mountains
solemnly affirmed as follows:

"We were to measure, at night, a certain distance from a cliff which
was to be found by the relative positions of three tall trees. It was
on a bleak tableland nine thousand feet above the sea. The wind
chilled us to the marrow, althoug