e
beast jumped out! As for how the siller came there, I canna just
say; but, you mind, the dominie told us in the school that, lang
syne, some of those viking lads used to cruise hereabout. Now, I'm
thinking that it's just possible one of them had maybe left the
siller for safety in the Kierfiold Cave where I--where we found it,
and clean forgotten to go back for it; just as old Betsy Matthew
forgot the guineas she hid under the floor in the heel of a
stocking."

"Ay, I dinna doubt it may be so, Willie," observed Rosson. "But
then, what about the dead man's head?"

"'Deed I canna say what way that could be there. I'm thinking we
must e'en refer it to the dominie. He kens all about these things,"
said Hercus; and then he turned to Kinlay, who hitherto had
expressed no conjecture.

"But what think you of it all, Tom?"

"What do I think!" said Kinlay in a tone of indifference. "I care
not what way the silver came there. What does it matter? I'm only
thinking what I'll do with my own share of it."

Now I confess that I had not before thought anything at all about
what we should do with the silver. I was so much interested in the
circumstance of our curious discovery of the hidden treasure that
the thought of its market value, or of our means of disposing of
it, had never entered my head; and I believe Hercus and Rosson were
totally ignorant of the fact that our find was really worth more
than the mere interest we naturally attached to the articles as
curious antiquities. Had I been asked as to the disposal of them, I
believe I would have proposed that the whole treasure should be
handed over to the care of our schoolmaster, who would doubtless
see that we did not lose by any sale he might effect.

Tom Kinlay was the first to suggest the sharing of the silver
pieces. We could offer no reasonable objection to a plan which
seemed so fair to all of us, and we agreed that before we parted an
equal division should be made.

Walking along a stretch of bleak moorland bordering the sea, taking
always the nearest cuts across the jutting points of rocky
headland, we at length approached the quaint graveyard of Bigging.
The night was clear, and light almost as day; but Robbie and Willie
would, I believe, rather have gone many miles out of our direct way
than go near that awesome place.

The ruined chapel and the long, flat tombstones surrounding it,
seemed to have an eerie influence upon our imagination, and we
could but w