I could hear Moira's quick breaths come and go as I worked, and with each shovelful of soil I turned Cumshaw craned his head a little further forward.

"Three foot, maybe three foot six," Cumshaw said once, in a voice that was curiously hoarse. The remark puzzled me for a moment, and then in a flash I recollected that his father had told Bryce that the hole where the gold was buried would be three feet or three feet six deep at a guess.

I went on digging. The hole deepened and widened, and still nothing appeared. I paused in my work and flung the damp perspiration from my forehead with a grimy hand. I had been working eagerly, excitedly.

"I'll take a hand now," Cumshaw offered with surprising alacrity.

I shook my head and stabbed the spade further into the earth. It struck something soft which yet offered a remarkable resistance to the progress of the instrument. And then in an instant I was down on my knees, the steaming sting of my perspiring face all forgotten in the wild intense eagerness of my discovery. I flung the spade about like a mad-man, and my breath came and went through my teeth with a hissing sound like that of escaping steam. I was mud and muck from head to foot and my hands were caked with clay, but that did not matter. Nothing mattered save the one startling fact that I had struck something that answered to the description of the stuff we were seeking. At last, after seemingly eternal hours of incredible toil, though in reality it couldn't have been more than a few seconds, the earth came away, and my spade lay bare four bags of mouldering leather—four torn and decaying things through which came the dull golden gleam of minted metal. With a smothered cry Cumshaw threw himself on the saddle-bags and hugged and clawed them like a man gone demented. For the moment there came a curious vulpine look into his face, and then it passed so swiftly that I could have fancied that it had never been there or anywhere else save in my imagination.

"We've found it at last," I said, and was surprised to find how thin my voice had become. It was the first rational word since I had begun to dig, and it acted on Cumshaw like a douche of cold water. He dropped the bags as if he had been stung, and climbed out of the hole rather shamefacedly.

Moira opened her mouth as if to speak and then shut it again. Ludicrous as it all looked, it was sufficient to show me just how unbalanced sane people can become at the sight of gold. The three of us looked at each other, and then I fancy we all laughed, albeit a little hysterically.

The rest is soon told. We got the rotting bags out somehow, and portion of their contents spilled out on the ground, though we didn't mind that at the time. There was more money in each of the bags than any one of us had ever handled before. In the light of what happened afterwards I'm positive that it was Cumshaw who suggested filling up the hole.

"A good idea," I thought. A gaping hole in the ground might attract the attention of strangers and lead to further enquiries—the kind of enquiries that would not be welcomed by us. I had thrown all but the last shovelful in when Cumshaw drew something from his pocket, looked at it a moment, and then, with a muttered exclamation, threw it into the hole and trod it deep into the earth. I got but the one look at it, and it seemed to me to be an ordinary leather-covered pocket-book. I was on the point of asking him the meaning of his action when I chanced to glance up at his face, and what I saw there made me shut my lips down like a steel trap. I said nothing, and beyond my first natural start of surprise I don't think I gave myself away at all.

It doesn't matter just how much we made out of it. If I were to write down the exact figures no one would believe them or me; but when I say that neither Cumshaw nor I—for Moira pooled her share with mine after all—will have to do a hand's turn again as long as we live, some idea can be gained of what was in those four decaying saddle-bags. To place gold, more especially minted coin, in circulation in this year of grace one thousand nine hundred and twenty requires more ingenuity than most men are possessed of, and frankly I could see no way out of it for many a long day. But in the end I struck an unexpected solution. What that solution was is neither here nor there: the expedients I resorted to would, if written down, fill a longer and perhaps a more exciting volume than this. Some day, when old age is creeping on me and the good opinion of my neighbours has almost ceased to matter, I may tell the tale in its entirety.

As we had no desire to attract more attention than we could help we did not attempt to take the gold along with us. Instead we buried it in a secluded spot not far from the railway, and a week or so later Cumshaw and I returned in the car for it.

"I wonder," I said, "how those chaps managed to find out so much about everything? Of course they were paralleling Bryce's investigations, but that doesn't explain all; they knew more about some things than he did himself."

We were sitting round the fire one evening a month or so later. Moira and I had just returned from our honeymoon, and Cumshaw had dropped in with the news that his father was in the hands of a noted alienist who hoped in time to completely cure the old man. The announcement had set us talking about our recent experiences, and apropos of them I had uttered the above remark.

"I've often wondered," Moira said, "how they first learnt about the treasure."

There was silence for a space and then Cumshaw spoke. "I rather fancy," he said, "that they knew about its existence long before Mr. Bryce did."

Moira shot a startled glance at him and I said, "Whatever do you mean?"

"You remember that pocket-book I threw into the trench the day we found the treasure?"

I nodded. "Yes," said Moira breathlessly.

"I found that in the grass early in the morning before I went up to the cave. It was a diary belonging to a man named Alick Blane. I didn't read it right through—I didn't have the time for one thing—but what I did see told me all I wanted to know. I buried it in the trench because I did not want what was written in the book to be published to the world. It was one of those things that are better kept out of sight and circulation."

"But what was it?" I queried.

He looked at us a moment as if debating with himself whether or not to tell us.

"Alick Blane's father was the trooper who shot Bradby," he said, and left us to imagine all the rest.

THE END.