o get angry, as I saw Monday was laughing up his sleeve at
me, and I called him _Alec_ to shew him I was not in a laughing humour
but thoroughly in earnest.

I walked along next inside the wall to about the point on the paper
marked P, which appeared to me to be at the window of the house.

"What is window, Alec?"

"Fenetre."

That would not do.

"Now look here, Alec, you are laughing at me again, and I don't like it;
laugh some other time, but for the present give me your full attention,
and don't be a ninny. It is no joking matter, but one upon which I am
very serious and anxious, as I believe there is something attached to
this quest which is really worth a little trouble to elucidate."

"And," replied he, still smiling, "when you get to the end of your
quest, I believe you will 'shake hands with a shadow' as I told you
before. But, Bold Crusoe, I _will_ do my best to help you as a good
comrade should, so I will bottle up my hilarious mood till you find your
treasure, and then I will explode."

"Very well, Monday," I replied. "I trust soon to be able to make you
have a perfect earthquake when I shew you Old Barbe Rouge's 'Petites
fees.' Fenetre will not do. Now what are we standing near that commences
in French with the letter P?"

Monday looked about and quickly said,

"La porte, the door, porche, the porch; how will they do?"

"Capital! now we are surely on the right track."

So again we brought our measuring stick into play, but again the measure
was not quite right, but still not far out. We made it nearly eleven
yards instead of ten, and although not perfectly correct, it gave me
great hope.

With but little trouble we made out the letters PM to be Porte Magasin
(door of the store house), and again we were about a yard too much in
the measurement. So we left it, and proceeded to the last point, the
letters CC.

The point was outside the walls, and the longest distance of all--the
figures twenty being written on the line. As in the other instances I
asked Monday the names of all kinds of objects to locate the letters CC,
but failed in this, except that I presumed C might be Chaumiere =
Cottage.

Next taking our stand at the point which we supposed the centre of the
diagram--the place of the skull--we measured twenty yards towards the
cottage, but it fell short of the nearest point of the building by
nearly six feet; therefore probably it did not refer to the cottage at
all.

We assumed theref