at my
cap, I measured thirty-two paces as nearly as I could, and then
stopped.

"Before me was a patch of velvet grass, some twelve feet square and
bare of the undergrowth that crowded elsewhere; but not a trace of a
stone. I looked right and left, crossed the tiny lawn, peered all
about, but still saw nothing at all resembling what I sought.

"As it began to dawn on me that all my hopes had been duped, my
journey vain, and my father's words an empty cheat, a sickening
despair got hold of me. My knees shook together, and big drops of
sweat gathered on my forehead. I roused myself and searched again;
again I was baffled. Distractedly I beat the bushes round and round
the tiny lawn, then flung myself down on the turf and gave way to my
despair. To this, then, it had all come; this was the end for which
I had abandoned my wife and child; this the treasure that had dangled
so long before my eyes. Fool that I had been! I cursed my madness
and the hour when I was born; never before had I heartily despised
myself, never until now did I know how the lust for this treasure had
eaten into my soul. The secret, if secret indeed there were, and all
were not a lie, was in the keeping of the silent Peak.

"I almost wept with wrath. I tore the turf in my frenzy, and felt as
one who would fain curse God and die. But after a while my passion
spent itself. I sat up and reflected that after all my first
direction might have been the right one; at any rate, I would try it
again and explore it thoroughly. The instructions were precise, and
had been confirmed in the matter of the tree. Evidently the person
that wrote them had been upon the Peak, and what, if they were lies,
was to be gained by the cheat?

"I pulled out the parchment again and read it through; then started
to my feet with fresh energy. I was just leaving the little lawn and
returning down my path, when it struck me that the bush on my left
hand was of a curious shape. It seemed a mere tangled knot of
creepers covered with large white blossom, and rose to about my own
height. Carelessly I thrust my stick into the mass, when its point
jarred upon--stone!

"Yes, stone! In a moment my knife was out and I was down on hands
and knees cutting and tearing at the tendrils. Some of them were
full three inches thick, but I slashed and tugged, with breath that
came and went immoderately fast, with bleeding hands and thumping
heart, until little by little the stone