nted. For some
while he skirted, with attentive eyes, the margin of the thicket. Then,
seeming to recognise some mark, for his countenance became immediately
lightened of a load of thought, he paused and addressed me. "Here," said
he, "is the entrance of the secret path that I have mentioned, and here
you shall await me. I but pass some hundreds of yards into the swamp to
bury my poor treasure; as soon as that is safe I will return." It was in
vain that I sought to dissuade him, urging the dangers of the place; in
vain that I begged to be allowed to follow, pleading the black blood
that I now knew to circulate in my veins: to all my appeals he turned a
deaf ear, and, bending back a portion of the screen of bushes,
disappeared into the pestilential silence of the swamp.

At the end of a full hour, the bushes were once more thrust aside; and
my father stepped from out the thicket, and paused, and almost staggered
in the first shock of the blinding sunlight. His face was of a singular
dusky red; and yet, for all the heat of the tropical noon, he did not
seem to sweat.

"You are tired," I cried, springing to meet him. "You are ill."

"I am tired," he replied; "the air in that jungle stifles one; my eyes,
besides, have grown accustomed to its gloom, and the strong sunshine
pierces them like knives. A moment, Teresa, give me but a moment. All
shall yet be well. I have buried the hoard under a cypress, immediately
beyond the bayou, on the left-hand margin of the path; beautiful, bright
things, they now lie whelmed in slime; you shall find them there, if
needful. But come, let us to the house; it is time to eat against our
journey of the night; to eat and then to sleep, my poor Teresa: then to
sleep." And he looked upon me out of bloodshot eyes, shaking his head as
if in pity.

We went hurriedly, for he kept murmuring that he had been gone too long
and that the servants might suspect; passed through the airy stretch of
the verandah; and came at length into the grateful twilight of the
shuttered house. The meal was spread; the house servants, already
informed by the boatmen of the master's return, were all back at their
posts, and terrified, as I could see, to face me. My father still
murmuring of haste with weary and feverish pertinacity, I hurried at
once to take my place at table; but I had no sooner left his arm than he
paused and thrust forth both his hands with a strange gesture of
groping. "How is this?" he cried, in