r that miserable lost clue;
and the fact that they all failed to find it is conclusive evidence to
me that it is no longer in existence."

"Well, I really don't know, my boy; I am not prepared to say so much as
that," answered my mother. "Your dear father took the same view of the
matter that you do, and never, to my knowledge, devoted a single hour to
the search. And I have heard him say that it was the same with your
grandfather. And if they never searched for the lost clue, how can we
know or suppose that _any one_ has searched for it since Hugh Saint
Leger abandoned the quest? Yet there never appears to have been the
slightest shadow of doubt in the minds of any of your ancestors, that
when Richard Saint Leger died in the arms of his son Hugh, he held the
clue to the secret; indeed, he died in the act of endeavouring to
communicate it."

"So I have always understood," answered I, with languidly reviving
interest. "But it is so long since I last heard the story--not since I
was a little shaver in petticoats--that I have practically forgotten the
details. I should like to hear it again, if it is not troubling you too
much."

"It is no trouble at all, my dear boy, for it can be told in very few
words. Besides, you _ought_ to know it," answered my mother. "You are
aware, of course, that the Saint Legers have been a race of daring and
adventurous seamen, as far back as our family records go; and Richard
Saint Leger, who was born in 1689, was perhaps the most daring and
adventurous of them all. He was a contemporary of the great Captain
(afterwards Lord) Anson; and it was upon his return from a voyage to the
West Indies that he first became aware of the rumours, which reached
England from time to time, of the fabulous value of the galleon which
sailed annually from Acapulco to Manilla laden with the treasure of
Peru. These rumours, which were no doubt greatly exaggerated, were well
calculated to excite the imagination and stimulate the enterprise of the
bold and restless spirits of that period; so much so, indeed, that when
the English, in 1739, declared war against Spain, the capture of one of
these ships became to the English adventurer what the discovery of the
fabled El Dorado had been to his predecessor of Elizabethan times. At
length--in the year 1742, I think it was--it became whispered about
among those restless spirits that a galleon had actually been captured,
and that the captors had returned to E