and this belief received color
from the fact that a little before, in his feverish fancy, he had been
capturing a Spanish galleon, and had got about to the part of the affair
where the sheering up of a plank midway between the main and mizzen
masts, for the accommodation of the Spaniards in leaving their vessel,
would be appropriate. Thinking the matter over calmly afterwards, and in
the light of subsequent events, she came to the conclusion that he was
trying to tell her how and where his treasure was hid. Acting upon this
belief, she sheered up all the planks about the house that seemed at all
promising. She even had the cellar dug up and the well dragged. But not
a scrap of the treasure did she ever find.

And the worst part of it was, that from that time onward our family
had no luck at all. Excepting my elderly cousin, Gregory Wilkinson--who
inherited a snug little fortune from his mother, and expanded it into
a very considerable fortune by building up a large manufacture of
carpet-slippers for the export trade--the rule in my family has been a
respectable poverty that has just bordered upon actual want. But all the
generations since my great-great-great-uncle's time have been cheered,
as poverty-stricken people naturally would be cheered, by the knowledge
that the pirate hoard was in existence; and by the hope that some day it
would be found, and would make them all enormously rich at a jump.
From the moment when I first heard of the treasure, as a little boy, I
believed in it thoroughly; and I also believed that I was the member of
the family destined to discover it.

II.

I was glad to find, when I married Susan, that she believed in my
destiny too. After talking the matter over quite seriously, we decided
that the best thing for us to do was to go and live either in or near
Lewes, so that my opportunities for investigation might be ample. I
think, too, that Susan was pleased with the prospect of having a nice
little house of our own, with a cow and peach-trees and chickens,
where we could be very happy together. Moreover, she had notions about
house-keeping, especially about house-keeping in the country, which she
wanted to put into practice.

We found a confirmation of my destiny in the ease with which the
preliminaries of my search were accomplished. The house that we wanted
seemed to be there just waiting for us--a little bit of a house, well
out in the country, with a couple of acres of land aroun