as nothing
happened I began to find my watchful waiting dull. Crusoe, worn
out perhaps by some private nocturnal pig-hunt, slept heavily where
the drip of the spring over the brim of old Heintz's kettle cooled
the air. Aunt Jane's sobs had ceased, and only a low murmur of
voices came from the cabin. I began to consider whether it would
not be well to take a walk with Cuthbert Vane and discover the
tombstone all over again. I knew nothing, of course, of Mr.
Tubbs's drastic measures with the celebrated landmark. As to
Cuthbert's interrupted courtship, I depended on the vast excitement
of discovering the cave to distract his mind from it. For that was
the idea, of course--Cuthbert Vane and I would explore the cave,
and then whenever I liked I could prick the bubble of Mr. Tubbs's
ambitions, without relating the whole strange story of the diary
and the _Island Queen_. I was immensely pleased already by the
elimination of Mr. Tubbs from the number of those who need have a
finger in the golden pie. I thought that perhaps with time and
patience I might coax events to play still further into my hand.

But meanwhile the cave drew me like a magnet. I jealously desired
to be the first to see it, to snatch from Mr. Tubbs the honors of
discovery. And I wanted to know about poor Peter--and, the
doubloons that he had gone back to fetch.

But already Captain Magnus had forsaken the post of duty and
departed on an unknown errand. Could I ask Cuthbert Vane to do it,
too? And then I smiled a smile that was half proud. I might ask
him--but he would refuse me. In Cuthbert's simple code, certain
things were "done," certain others not. Among the nots was to fail
in standing by a friend. And just now Cuthbert was standing by
Dugald Shaw. Therefore nods and becks and wreathed smiles were
vain. In Cuthbert's quiet, easy-mannered, thick-headed way he
could turn his back calmly on the face of love and follow the harsh
call of duty even to death. It would not occur to him not to. And
he never would suspect himself of being a hero--that would be quite
the nicest part of it.

And yet I knew poor Cuthbert was an exploded superstition, an
anachronism, part of a vanishing order of things, and that the
ideal which was replacing him was a boiler-plated monster with
clock-work heart and brain, named Efficiency. And that Cuthbert
must go, along with his Jacobean manor and his family ghost, and
the oaks in the park, and everything