ome here! was the
skull nailed to the limb with the face outwards, or with the face to
the limb?"

"De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good,
widout any trouble."

"Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped the
beetle?"--here Legrand touched each of Jupiter's eyes.

"'Twas dis eye, massa--de lef' eye--jis as you tell me," and here it
was his right eye that the negro indicated.

"That will do--we must try it again."

Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw or fancied that I saw,
certain indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot
where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of
its former position, Taking now the tape-measure from the nearest
point of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension
in a straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was
indicated, removed by several yards from the point at which we had
been digging.

Around the new position a circle, somewhat larger than in the former
instance, was now described, and we again set to work with the spades,
I was dreadfully weary, but scarcely understanding what had occasioned
the change in my thoughts, I felt no longer any great aversion from
the labor imposed, I had become most unaccountably interested--nay,
even excited. Perhaps there was something, amid all the extravagant
demeanor of Legrand--some air of forethought, or of deliberation,
which impressed me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself
actually looking, with something that very much resembled expectation,
for the fancied treasure, the vision of which had demented my
unfortunate companion. At a period when such vagaries of thought most
fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a
half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog.
His uneasiness in the first instance had been, evidently, but the
result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and
serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made
furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould
frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass
of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with
several buttons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of decayed
woolen. One or two strokes of a spade upturned the blade of a large
Spanish knife, and, as we dug farther, three or four pieces of gold
and