olitary excursions inland.

Mr. Tubbs remarked, scornfully, that a man with a nose for money
ought to have smelted out the chest before this, but if his own
nasal powers were of that character he did not offer to employ them
in the service of the expedition. Miss Higglesby-Browne, however,
had taken to retiring to the hut for long private sessions with
herself. My aunt reverentially explained their purpose. The
hiding-place of the chest being of course known to the Universal
Wisdom, all Violet had to do was to put herself in harmony and the
knowledge would be hers. The difficulty was that you had first to
overcome your Mundane Consciousness. To accomplish this Violet was
struggling in the solitude of the hut.

Meanwhile Mr. Tubbs sat at the feet of Aunt Jane, reading aloud
from a volume entitled _Paeans of Passion_, by a celebrated lady
lyric poet of our own land.

After my meeting with Captain Magnus in the forest, Lookout Ridge
was barred to me. Crusoe and I must do our rambling in other
directions. This being so, I bethought me again of the wrecked
sloop lying under the cliffs on the north shore of the cove. I
remembered that there had seemed to be a way down the cliffs. I
resolved to visit the sloop again. The terrible practicality of
the beautiful youth made it difficult to indulge in romantic
musings in his presence. And to me a derelict brings a keener tang
of romance than any other relic of man's multitudinous and futile
strivings.

The descent of the gully proved an easy matter, and soon I was on
the sand beside the derelict. Sand had heaped up around her hull,
and filled her cockpit level with the rail, and drifted down the
companion, stuffing the little cabin nearly to the roof, Only the
bow rose free from the white smother of sand. Whatever wounds
there were in her buried sides were hidden. You felt that some
wild caprice of the storm had lifted her and set her down here, not
too roughly, then whirled away and left her to the sand.

Crusoe slipped into the narrow space under the roof of the cabin,
and I leaned idly down to watch him through a warped seam between
the planks. Then I found that I was looking, not at Crusoe, but
into a little dim enclosure like a locker, in which some small
object faintly caught the light. With a revived hope of finding
relics I got out my knife--a present from Cuthbert Vane--and set
briskly to work widening the seam.

I penetrated finally into a small l