"Don't shoot! Oh, don't shoot me!"

"Be so good as to step across here," the doctor commanded.

"You won't hurt me? Dan'l, make him promise he won't hurt me!"

"Come!" the doctor commanded again, and Phoby Geen came to them through
the pool with his knees knocking together. "Put out your hands, please.
Thank you. Dan'l, search, and you'll find a piece of cord in my pocket.
Take it, and tie up his wrists."

"I never meant you no harm," whined Phoby; but he submitted.

"And now,"--the doctor turned to Dan'l--"leave him to me, step outside and
bring word as soon as you hear or glimpse a boat in the offing.
At what time, Mr. Geen, are the carriers coming for the tubs out yonder?
Answer me: and if I find after that you've answered me false, I'll blow
your brains out."

"Two in the morning," answered Phoby.

"And Tummels will be here in an hour," sighed the doctor, relieved in his
mind on the one point he had been forced to leave to chance.
"Step along, Dan'l; and don't you strain yourself in your weak state by
handling the tubs: Tummels can manage them single-handed. You see, Mr.
Geen, plovers don't shed their feathers hereabouts in the summer months;
and a feather floating on a tideway doesn't, as a rule, keep moored to one
place. I took a swim this morning and cleared up those two points for
myself. Step along, Dan'l, my friend; I seemed to hear Tummels outside,
lowering sail."

Twelve hours later, Dan'l, with a pocketful of money, was shipped on the
high seas aboard a barque bound out of Bristol for Georgia; and there, six
months later, Amelia Sanders followed him out and married him. Not for
years did they return to Porthleven and live on Aunt Bussow's money, no
man molesting them. The Cove had given up business, and Government let
bygones be bygones, behaving very handsome for once.

WHERE THE TREASURE IS.

I.

In Ardevora, a fishing-town on the Cornish coast not far from the Land's
End, lived a merchant whom everybody called 'Elder' Penno, or
'The Elder'--not because he had any right, or laid any claim, to that
title. His father and grandfather had worn it as office-bearers in a
local religious sect known as the Advent Saints; and it had survived the
extinction of that sect and passed on to William John Penno, an orthodox
Wesleyan, as a family sobriquet.

He was sixty-three years old, a widower, and childless.
His fellow-townsmen supposed him to be rich because he had so many irons
in th