to the race of Eternal Children, it was El Dorado,
Aladdin's lamp, the mines of Peru, the whole sunken Spanish Main,
glimmering fifty fathoms deep in mother-of-pearl and the moon. It was
the very Secret Rose of Romance; and, also, mark you, it was some
money--O! perhaps, all told, it might be some five thousand guineas,
or--what would you say?--twenty-five odd thousand dollars; Calypso knows
better than I, and she, as I said, alone knows where it is now hid, and
how much of it now remains."

He paused to relight his cigar, while Calypso and I--Well, he began
again:

"Now my daughter and I," and he paused to look at her fondly, "though
of the race of Eternal Children, are not without some of the innocent
wisdom which Holy Writ countenances as the self-protection of the
innocent--Calypso, I may say, is particularly endowed with this quality,
needing it as she does especially for the guardianship for her foolish
talkative old father, who, by the way, is almost at the end of his tale.
So, when this old chest flashed its bewildering dazzle upon us, we,
being poor folk, were not more dazzled than afraid. For--like the poor
man in the fable--such good fortune was all too likely to be our
undoing, should it come to the ears of the great, or the indigent
criminal. The 'great' in our thought was, I am ashamed to say, the
sacred British Treasury, by an ancient law of which, forty per cent. of
all 'treasure-trove' belongs to His Majesty the King. The 'indigent
criminal' was represented by--well, our coloured (and not so very much
coloured) neighbours. Of course, we ought to have sent the whole
treasure to your friend, John Saunders, of His Britannic Majesty's
Government at Nassau, but--Well, we didn't. Some day, perhaps, you
will put in a word for us with him, as you drink his old port, in the
snuggery. Meanwhile, we had an idea, Calypso and I--"

He paused--for Calypso had involuntarily made a gesture, as though
pleading to be spared the whole revelation--and then with a smile,
continued:

"We determined to hide away our little hoard where it would be safe from
our neighbours, and dispose of it according to our needs with a certain
tradesman in the town whom we thought we could trust--a tradesman, who,
by the way, quite naturally levies a little tax upon us for his
security. No blame to him! I have lived far too long to be hard on human
nature."

"John Sweeney?" I asked, looking over at Calypso, with eyes that dared
at last