o digging anew, and I to watching. For a full
twenty minutes he laboured, flinging out the sand to right and left,
and every now and then stopping for a moment to measure his progress.
By this time, I judged, he must have dug below the depth pointed out
upon the clasp, for once or twice he drew it out and paused in his
work to consult it.

He was just resuming, after one of these rests, when his spade grated
against something. He bent low to examine it, and then began to
shovel out the sand with inconceivable rapidity.

The treasure was found!

Like a madman he worked: so that even from where I stood I could hear
his breath coming hard and fast. At length, with one last glance
around, he knelt down and disappeared from my view. My time was
come.

Knife in hand, I softly clambered down the south side of the rock,
and dropped upon the sand.

The pit lay rather to the north, so that by creeping behind the ridge
on the south side I could get close up to him unobserved, even should
he look. But he was absorbed now in his prize, so that I stole
noiselessly out across the strip of sand between us until within
about ten feet of him; then, on hands and knees, I crawled and pulled
myself to the trench's lip and peered over.

There, below me, within grasp, he sat, his back still turned towards
me. The moon was full in front, so that it cast no shadow of me
across him. There he sat, and in front of him lay, imbedded in the
sand, a huge iron chest, bound round with a broad band of iron, and
secured with an enormous padlock. On the rusty top I could even
trace the rudely-cut initials A. T.

I held my breath as he drew from his pocket my grandfather's key and
inserted it in the lock, after first carefully clearing away the
sand. The stubborn lock creaked heavily as at last and with
difficulty he managed to turn the key. And still I knelt above him,
knife in hand.

Then, with a long, shuddering sigh, he lifted and threw back the
groaning lid. We both gazed, and as we gazed were well-nigh blinded.

For this is what we saw:--

At first, only a blaze of darting rays that beneath the moon gleamed,
sparkled and shot out a myriad scintillations of colour--red, violet,
orange, green and deepest crimson. Then by degrees I saw that all
these flashing hues came from one jumbled heap of gems--some large,
some small, but together in value beyond a king's ransom.

I caught my breath and looked again. Diamonds, rubies, sa