ry, but a silver coin.

"Somebody else has been down here, dropping money," I said, handing the
piece up for Mr. Dane to examine.

"Then it was a long time ago," he replied, "for the coin has the head of
Louis XIII. on it."

"Oh, then she was right!" I cried. "I _can_ find lost treasure. I'm
going to look for more. I believe that piece must have fallen out of a
hole I've found here, which goes back ever so far into the rock. I can
get my arm in nearly to the elbow."

"_Who_ was 'right'?" my brother wanted to know.

"The gipsy. She told my fortune. That was why I didn't refuse to look
for her rosary."

"I should have thought a child would have known better," he remarked,
scornfully; and his tone hurt my sensitiveness the more because his
voice had been so anxious and his words so kind when I was fainting. He
had called me "child" and "little girl." I remembered well, and the
words had been saying themselves over in my mind ever since. I rather
thought that they betrayed a secret--that perhaps he had been getting to
care for me a little. That idea pleased me, because he had been abrupt
sometimes, and I hadn't known what to make of him. Every girl owes it to
herself to understand a man thoroughly--at least, as much of his
character and feelings as may concern her. Besides, it is not soothing
to one's vanity to try--well, yes, I may as well confess that!--to _try_
and please a man, yet to know you've failed after days of association so
constant and intimate that hours are equal to the same number of months
in an ordinary acquaintance. Now, after thinking I'd made the discovery
that he really had found me attractive, it was a shock to be spoken to
in this way.

"Oh, you _are_ cross!" I exclaimed, still poking about in the hole under
the stairway.

"I'm not cross," he said, "but if I were, you'd deserve it, because you
know you've been foolish. And if you don't know, you ought to, so that
you may be wiser next time. The idea of a sensible young woman chumming
up in a lonely cave, with a dirty old gipsy certain to be a thief, if
not worse, letting her tell fortunes, and then falling into a trap like
this. I wouldn't have believed it of you!"

"I think you're perfectly horrid," said I. "I wish you had let the guide
find me. He would have done it just as well, and been much more polite."

"Doubtless he would have been more polite, but he isn't as young, and
might have had trouble in getting you out. There! that's my