irds of a feather than we were.
Anyway, you, Middlebrook, know how men, thrown together in that way,
will talk--nay, must talk unless they'd go mad!--talk about themselves
and their doings and so on. We all talked--we used to tell tales of
our doubtful pasts as we huddled together under the rocks at nights,
and some nice, lurid stores there were, I can assure you. The Quicks
had seen about as much of the doubtful and seamy side of seafaring
life as men could, and all of us could contribute something. Also,
the Quicks had money, safely stowed away in banks here and there--they
used to curse their fate, left there apparently to die, when they
thought of it. And it was that, I think, that led me to tell, one
night, about my adventure with the naughty bank-manager at Blyth, and
of the chests of old monastic treasure which I'd planted up here on
this Northumbrian coast."

"Ah!" I exclaimed. "So you told Noah and Salter Quick that?"

"I told Noah and Salter Quick that," he replied slowly. "Yes--and I
can now explain to you what Salter was after when he appeared in these
parts. I read the newspaper accounts, of the inquest and so on, and I
saw through everything, and could have thrown a lot of light on
things, only I wasn't going to. But it was this way--I told the Quicks
all about the Blyth affair--the truth was, I didn't believe we should
ever get away from that cursed island--but I told them in a fashion
which, evidently, afterwards led to considerable puzzlement on their
part. I told them that I buried the chests of old silver, wherein were
the other valuables taken from the vaults of the bank, in a churchyard
on this coast, close to the graves of my ancestors--I described the
spot and the lie of the ruins pretty accurately. Now where the
Quicks--Salter, at any rate--got puzzled and mixed was over my use of
the word ancestors. What I meant--but never said--was that I had
planted the stuff near the graves of my maternal ancestors, the old De
Knaythevilles, who were once great folk in these parts, and of whose
name my own Christan name, Netherfield, is, of course, a corruption.
But Salter Quick, to be sure, thought the graves would bear the name
Netherfield, and when he came along this coast, it was that name he
was hunting for. Do you see?"

"Then Salter Quick was after that treasure?" I said.

"Of course he was!" replied Baxter. "The wonder to me is that he and
Noah hadn't been after it before. But they were men who ha