me we
had gone fifty feet threw us quite off the scent. But for my
deep-seated impressions that treasure was here somewhere actually
buried, we might have had all our labor in vain."

"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle--how
excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist upon
letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?"

"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions
touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own
way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung
the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An
observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter idea."

"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me.
What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?"

"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There
seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them--and yet
it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would
imply. It is clear that Kidd--if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure,
which I doubt not--it is clear that he must have had assistance in the
labor. But this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to
remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with
a mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit;
perhaps it required a dozen--who shall tell?"

CORPORAL FLINT'S MURDER

By J. FENIMORE COOPER

Half an hour passed after the execution of the missionary before the
chiefs commenced their proceedings with the corporal. The delay was
owing to a consultation, in which The Weasel had proposed despatching a
party to the castle, to bring in the family, and thus make a common
destruction of the remaining pale-faces known to be in that part of the
Openings. Peter did not dare to oppose this scheme, himself; but he so
managed as to get Crowsfeather to do it, without bringing himself into
the foreground. The influence of the Pottawattamie prevailed, and it
was decided to torture this one captive, and to secure his scalp,
before they proceeded to work their will on the others. Ungque, who
had gained ground rapidly by his late success, was once more
commissioned to state to the captive the intentions of his captors.

"Brother," commenced The Weasel, placing himself directly in front of
the corporal, "I am about to spe