savings; and, anxious only to secure as generous a
provision as possible for my mother, had been tempted to put his
hard-earned money into certain projects that, offering, in their
inception, a too alluring promise of continuous prosperity and generous
dividends, had failed to withstand the test of time and the altered
conditions of trade; with the result that, after paying handsome
percentages for a more or less lengthened period, they had suddenly
collapsed like a pricked balloon, leaving my poor mother penniless. Of
course everything had been done that was possible to save something,
though it might be ever so little, from the wreck; but there had been
nothing to save; every penny was gone; and when I reached home I found
the poor soul literally at her wits' end to maintain a supply of the
ordinary necessaries of life.

My appearance upon the scene of course necessitated the raking up of the
whole miserable story once more; but when I had been told everything, I
saw at once that nothing more could be done, and that my poor mother
would simply have to put up with the loss as best she might.

Then arose the question of what was best to be done under our altered
circumstances. The first conclusion at which we arrived was the obvious
one that it would be quite impossible for my mother to maintain such an
establishment as "The Spaniards" upon my income of ten pounds per month
as chief mate; and she therefore suggested that we should let it upon a
lease, if a suitable tenant could be found, and that she should retire,
with her altered fortunes, into the obscurity of some small cottage. To
this, however, I would in no wise consent; and it was while we were
discussing the matter in all its bearings, and casting about for an
acceptable alternative, that my mother let fall a remark, which, little
as we suspected it at the moment, proved to be the key-note of the
present story.

"Ah, my son," she ejaculated, with a hopeless sigh, "if we could but
find the lost clue to Richard Saint Leger's buried treasure, all might
yet be well with us!"

"Ah!" I responded, with a still more hopeless sigh, "if only we could!
But I suppose there is about as much chance of that as there is of my
becoming Lord High Admiral of Great Britain. The clue must be
irretrievably lost, or it would have been discovered long ere now. I
suppose every Saint Leger, from my great-great-great-grandfather Hugh,
downwards, has taken his turn at hunting fo