take no stock in such yarns. My shells are all the treasure I expect to
find."

"What did you call that shell?" I asked.

He told me the name again, but again I forgot it immediately. Of course
I had asked it only for the sake of learning more precisely about Short
Shrift Island. He told me innocently enough just where it lay.

"Are you going after it?" he laughed.

"After what?" I enquired in alarm.

"The ----"; (again he mentioned the name of the shell.)

"O! well," I replied, "I am going on a duck-shooting trip to Andros
before long, and I thought I might drop around to your cay and pick a
few of them up for you."

"It would be mighty kind of you, but they're not easy to find. I'll tell
you just exactly--" He went off, dear fellow, into the minutest
description of the habitats of ----, while all the time I was eager to
rush off to Charlie Webster and John Saunders, and shout into their
ears--as, later, I did, at the first possible moment, that evening:
"I've found our missing cay! What's the matter with your old maps, John?
Short Shrift Island is ----; (I mentioned the name of a cay, which, as
in the case of "Dead Men's Shoes," I am unable to divulge.)

"Maybe!" said Charlie, "maybe! We can try it. But," he added, "did you
find out anything about Tobias?"

CHAPTER III

_In Which I am Afforded Glimpses into Futurity--Possibly Useful._

Two or three evenings before we were due to sail, at one of our snuggery
conclaves, I put the question whether any one had ever tried the
divining rod in hunting for treasure in the islands. Charlie took his
pipe out of his mouth, the more comfortably to beam his big brotherly
smile at me.

"What a kid you are!" he said. "You want the whole bag of tricks, eh?"

But I retorted that he was quite behind the times if he considered the
divining rod an exploded superstition. Its efficacy in finding water, I
reminded him, was now admitted by the most sceptical science, and I was
able to inform him that a great American railway company paid a yearly
salary to a "dowser" to guide it in the construction of new roads
through a country where water was scarce and hard to find.

Old John nodded, blinking his mischievous eyes. He had more sympathy
than Charlie with the foolishness of old romance. It was true enough, he
said, and added that he knew the man I wanted, a half-crazy old negro
back there in Grant's Town--the negro quarter spreading out into the
brush behind the ri