WHAT THE EARTH GAVE UP

Tom’s account of the way in which the powderkeg was entangled in the roots of the catalpa tree was more than borne out by the fact as the boys found it. It seemed to them a wonder that Tom had discovered it at all, so completely was it wrapped up in the knotted mass of root growths.

After digging away the earth until the whole root entanglement was exposed to view, the boys set Dick Wentworth at work cutting away the roots with his jackknife, a thing at which only one person could work at a time. When Dick’s hand grew tired, another of the boys relieved him at the task and the work was hurried as much as possible, not so much because it was growing late as because the little company’s curiosity was intense.

“Wonder how on earth anybody ever got the thing under the roots of a tree that way?” ventured Tom, as he toiled with his knife.

“Simple enough,” answered Cal. “He didn’t do it.”

“How did it get there, then?”

“Why, the tree grew there after the keg was buried, of course. Somebody stuck a catalpa bean in the ground directly over the keg. Probably the man who buried the thing did that; he wanted to provide a landmark by which to find the spot again, and probably he knew there wasn’t another catalpa tree on all Quasi plantation.”

“But that tree has been standing here a long time—twenty or twenty-five years I should say.”

“That only means that the keg was buried here twenty or twenty-five years ago at the least, and ’pon my word, it looks it.”

“What I’m wondering about,” interposed Larry, “is what the keg contains. It must be something important or nobody would have taken the pains to bury it and plant a tree over it.”

“And yet,” argued Dick, “if it is anything important, why did anybody bury it away out here and never come back for it?”

“It all depends,” answered Cal, “on just what you mean by ‘important.’ Things are important sometimes and utterly unimportant at others; important to one person and of no consequence to anybody else. At this moment I feel that my breakfast in the morning is becoming a thing of very great importance to me; but I don’t suppose poor Dunbar, wherever he is, cares a fig about it.”

“By the way, what can have become of the poor fellow? I wonder if he managed to fall out of the dory and get drowned?”

It was Tom who asked the question. Cal, who had thought a great deal about the matter, answered it promptly:

“That isn’t likely,” he said. “Indeed, it is scarcely possible. Dunbar was too good a boatman to fall overboard, and too good a swimmer to drown if he did. He would have climbed back into the dory with no worse consequence than a ducking in warm sea water.”

“What’s your theory then, Cal?”

“Why, that he has had one of his peculiar ‘spells.’ You remember that when he was missing from camp the last time he wrote us a letter, but when his lost knife was returned to him he seemed to remember nothing about it. More than that, he seemed to think the day he returned was the same as the day he went away. In other words, his memory was a blank as to the time he was away. Then, too, you remember that when we first found him here he couldn’t remember whether he had come three weeks or four weeks before. Still again, you remember how badly he was mixed up about the date just before he went away this time, and that too in spite of the fact that he had important papers to post before a given time.”

“Then you think he’s crazy?”

“I don’t know about that, because I’m not a doctor or an alienist, or anything else of the kind. But I think he has a way of losing himself now and then, though at ordinary times his head is a remarkably clear one.”

“I have read of such cases,” said Dick. “They call it ‘double consciousness,’ I believe. I don’t know whether it is regarded as a kind of insanity or not. Then you think, Cal—”

“I hardly know what I think. You see I don’t know the facts in this case. We know absolutely nothing of what Dunbar did or what happened to him after he passed out of sight behind the marsh island over there. So we haven’t enough facts to base any thinking at all upon. But it has occurred to me that after he left us one of his fits of self-forgetfulness may have come on, and it may have lasted ever since.”

At this point the discussion of Dunbar’s case was brought to an end by an unexpected happening. As Tom tugged hard at one of the larger roots in an effort to loosen its hold, the keg suddenly fell to pieces. The oaken staves and headings seemed still to be fairly sound, but the iron hoops that had held the keg together had been so eaten with rust that they fell into fragments under the strain and the staves tumbled together in a loose pile.

From among them Tom drew forth something, and all the boys held their torches close while examining it.

“What is it, anyhow?” was the question on every lip.

“It’s very heavy for its size,” said Tom, poising it in his hand.

“Of course it is,” answered Cal. “Lead usually is heavy for its size. But that’s a box, made of lead. If it were solid it would be a good deal heavier. Open it, Tom.”

“I can’t. It doesn’t seem to have any opening or any seams of any kind. Look at it for yourself, Cal.”

As he spoke he handed the thing to his comrade. It was an oblong mass, seemingly hollow, but showing no sign of an opening anywhere. It was about ten or eleven inches in length, a little more than four inches wide, and about two inches thick from top to bottom. The surface was much corroded, but Larry thought he discovered a partly obliterated inscription of some kind upon it.

“We must stop handling the thing carelessly,” he said. “Corroded as the surface is we might rub the inscription off, and in that way rob ourselves of the means of making out the meaning of the thing. We’ll carry it carefully to camp, quicken up the fire with plenty of light wood, and then make a minute examination of the curious find. Tom, you may have found a fortune for yourself this time, who knows?”

“Or a misfortune,” suggested Dick, who in his childhood had been a firm believer in all the mysteries and wonder workings recorded in the Arabian Night’s Entertainments, and still recalled them upon the smallest suggestion. “Shut up as it is, with no sign of an opening, who knows but that it bears Solomon’s seal on it? The inscription may be Solomon’s autograph, put there to hold captive some malicious genie. We all know what happened to the fisherman who let the smoke out of the copper vase.”

“Oh, I’ll take my chances on that sort of thing,” laughingly answered Tom, who, as the discoverer, was recognized by his comrades as the rightful owner of the box and the person entitled to say what should be done with it.

“Of course,” said Cal. “Genii don’t play tricks in our time and country. They’re afraid of the constable.”

The boys had reached the camp now, and a few minutes later a pile of blazing fat pine made the space around it as light as day. For an hour, perhaps, the boys minutely examined the queer casket. There was, or had been, an inscription cut upon its upper surface with the point of a penknife, but the corroding of the surface had so far obliterated it that the boys succeeded only in doubtfully guessing at a half-effaced letter here and there and in making out the figures 865 at the end of the writing.

“That’s the date,” said Larry—“1865, the figure one obliterated. Obviously the inscription tells us nothing. What next, Tom?”

Tom was minutely examining the sides of the case, scraping off the rust with his thumb nail. Presently, instead of answering Larry’s question, he cried out:

“Eureka! See here, boys! This box was made in two pieces exactly alike, one top and the other bottom. The two have been fitted together and then a hot iron has been drawn over the seam, completely obliterating it. It’s the nicest job of sealing a thing up water tight and air tight that I ever saw, but I’m going to spoil it.”

With that he opened his jackknife and very carefully drew its point along the line where the upper and lower halves of the casket had been joined. After he had traced the line twice with the knife point the two halves suddenly fell apart, and some neatly folded and endorsed papers were found within.

Tom began reading the endorsements, but before he had run half through the first one he leaped up, waving the documents over his head and shouting “hurrah!” in a way that Cal said was “like the howling of a demon accidentally involved with the accentuations of a buzz saw.”

After a moment the excited boy so far calmed his enthusiasm as to throw the bundle of papers into Larry’s face, shouting:

“I’ve found the Quasi deeds! I’ve saved Quasi to its rightful owners! Why don’t you all hurrah with me, you snails, you dormice or dormouses, whichever is the proper plural of dormouse? There are the papers and it was Tom Garnett who found them! For once prying curiosity has served a good turn. Now, all together! Hip, hip, hip, hurrah!”

The others joined heartily in the cheering that seemed necessary for the relief of Tom’s excitement, and half-spoken, half-ejaculated congratulations occupied the next five minutes.

After that the whole party sat down to hear the results of the more thorough examination of the papers, which Larry was delegated to make.

“Yes, these are the deeds,” he reported, “uninjured by time or damp or anything else, thanks to our grandfather’s care in sealing that leaden box. They were executed in May, 1861, and see, down in a corner of each is written:

“‘Recorded in the clerk’s office of Beaufort District, liber 211, pp. 371, 372, 373. J. S., Clerk.’

“And here’s a memorandum in our grandfather’s handwriting and signed by him. It is on a separate sheet, dated in February, 1865, and—”

“Read it!” suggested Cal.

“I will,” and he read as follows:

“‘The clerk’s office in which these deeds were recorded at the time of their execution has been destroyed, together with all the books of record. It is vitally necessary therefore that these original deeds shall be preserved. In these troublous times there is no place of deposit for them which can be deemed reasonably safe. I am sealing them in this leaden box, therefore, and will bury them upon the abandoned plantation of Quasi, to which they give title. I shall plant a catalpa bean above them as a sure means of identifying the spot, there being no other catalpa on the plantation. I shall send my daughters a detailed statement of what I have done, with instructions as to the way of finding the papers. I place this memorandum in the box with the deeds themselves, so that if anyone finds it he may know to whom its contents belong. The address of my daughters will be found endorsed upon the deeds themselves.’”