h we were only a little to the north
of the Tropic of Cancer. We rode all night and waited for the dawn in
the darkest and coldest hours of those altitudes. By the light of
pitch pine torches we consulted a map and decided that we had found the
right place. We rode forward a little and brushed against three soft
warm things. Turning in our saddles, by the flare of our torches held
high above our heads we beheld three corpses swaying in the wind. A
wailing cry of a woman's voice came from close at hand, and we fled as
if pursued by a thousand demons. My comrades assured me that the
Weeping Woman had brushed past us in her eternal flight."

This is a singular narrative but it would not be playing fair to doubt
it. To be over-critical of buried treasure stories is to clip the
wings of romance and to condemn the spirit of adventure to a pedestrian
gait. All these tales are true, or men of sane and sober repute would
not go a-treasure hunting by land and sea, and so long as they have a
high-hearted, boyish faith in their mysterious charts and hazy
information, doubters make a poor show of themselves and stand
confessed as thin-blooded dullards who never were young. Scattered
legends of many climes have been mentioned at random to show that
treasure is everywhere enveloped in a glamour peculiarly its own. The
base iconoclast may perhaps demolish Santa Claus (which God forbid),
but industrious dreamers will be digging for the gold of Captain Kidd,
long after the last Christmas stocking shall have been pinned above the
fireplace.

There are no conscious liars among the tellers of treasure tales. The
spell is upon them. They believe their own yarns, and they prove their
faith by their back-breaking works with pick and shovel. Here, for
example, is a specimen, chosen at hazard, one from a thousand cut from
the same cloth. This is no modern Ananias speaking but a gray-bearded,
God-fearing clam-digger of Jewell's Island in Casco Bay on the coast of
Maine.

"I can't remember when the treasure hunters first began coming to this
island, but as long ago as my father's earliest memories they used to
dig for gold up and down the shore. That was in the days when they
were superstitious enough to spill lamb's blood along the ground where
they dug in order to keep away the devil and his imps. I can remember
fifty years ago when they brought a girl down here and mesmerized her
to see if she could not lead them to the hidde