n your very
blood--when suddenly I realized that, misled by my enthusiasm,
Cuthbert was saying something which must not be said--that he was
about to offer the shelter of that ancient roof to me. To me,
whose heart could never nest there, but must be ever on the wing, a
wild bird of passage in the track of a ship--

I sat up with a galvanic start. "Oh--listen--didn't you hear
something?" I desperately broke in. For somehow I must stop him.
I didn't want our nice jolly friendship spoiled--and besides, fancy
being cooped up on an island with a man you have refused!
Especially when all the while you'd be wanting so to pet and
console him!

But with his calm doggedness Cuthbert began again--"I was a bit
afraid the old place would have seemed too quiet and dull to you--"
when the day was saved and my interruption strangely justified by a
shrill outcry from the camp.

I knew that high falsetto tone. It was the voice of Mr. Tubbs, but
pitched in a key of quite insane excitement. I sprang up and ran,
Crusoe and the Honorable Cuthbert at my heels. There in the midst
of the camp Mr. Tubbs stood, the center of a group who were
regarding him with astonished looks. Mr. Shaw and the captain had
left their tinkering, Cookie his saucepans, and Aunt Jane and
Violet had come hurrying from the hut. Among us all stood Mr.
Tubbs with folded arms, looking round upon the company with an
extraordinary air of complacency and triumph.

"What is it, oh, what is it, Mr. Tubbs?" cried Aunt Jane,
fluttering with the consciousness of her proprietorship.

But Mr. Tubbs glanced at her as indifferently as a sated
turkey-buzzard at a morsel which has ceased to tempt him.

"Mr. Tubbs," commanded Violet, "speak--explain yourself!"

"Come, out with it, Tubbs," advised Mr. Shaw.

Then the lips of Mr. Tubbs parted, and from them issued this
solitary word:

"Eureka!"

"What?" screamed Miss Higglesby-Browne. "_You have found it_?"

Solemnly Mr. Tubbs inclined his head.

"Eureka!" he repeated. "I have found it!"

Amidst the exclamations, the questions, the general commotion which
ensued, I had room for only one thought--that Mr. Tubbs had somehow
discovered the treasure in the cabin of the _Island Queen_.
Indeed, I should have shrieked the words aloud, but for a
providential dumbness that fell upon me. Meanwhile Mr. Tubbs had
unfolded his arms from their Napoleonic posture on his bosom long
enough to wave his hand for silence.

"F