here, to the island six weeks ago. It was her only refuge from some trouble that has always followed her. My father lived only a week and, day before yesterday, I came to find her—dying. I had been looking for her for twenty years. I was glad to see her once more—even though it was the end."
There was nothing that she could say to this, but he felt grateful for her silence, and that which her dark eyes expressed so plainly. Perhaps even this slight unburdening of his sorrow was a relief to the reserved wanderer, for excepting the girl in the big house on the mountain side, there was no one who could offer sympathy, and on her he could not lean. That was enough of a predicament already.
Sally turned towards the diggers on the beach.
"I must tell them to stop, Monsieur." Unconsciously she called him this, although she had never had any but his imaginary countrymen of that High School course to practise on. "The island is yours and the gold, if there is any, belongs to you too."
Now Charles Larone did a Quixotic and a handsome thing when he answered:
"No, if, as you say, there is any gold—and I think you will find it—it belongs surely to Monsieur Boltwood and yourself. I am only a rover who happened here. The buried treasure is the property of him who finds it. Good luck to your picks and shovels, Mademoiselle— But make that an N and try five paces north."
It was indeed quite as fine a thing as if the duly recorded title to a California mine of richest vein, and not phantom
