It was evening, when Croyden returned to Hampton—an evening which contained no suggestion of the Autumn he had left behind him on the Eastern Shore. It was raw, and damp, and chill, with the presage of winter in its cold; the leaves were almost gone from the trees, the blackening hand of frost was on flower and shrubbery. As he passed up the dreary, deserted street, the wind was whistling through the branches over head, and moaning around the houses like spirits of the damned.

He turned in at Clarendon—shivering a little at the prospect. He was beginning to appreciate what a winter spent under such conditions meant, where one’s enjoyments and recreations are circumscribed by the bounds of comparatively few houses and few people—people, he suspected, who could not understand what he missed, of the hurly-burly of life and amusement, even if they tried. Their ways were sufficient for them; they were eminently satisfied with what they had; they could not comprehend dissatisfaction in another, and would have no patience with it.

He could imagine the dismalness of Hampton, when contrasted with the brightness of Northumberland. 186 The theatres, the clubs, the constant dinners, the evening affairs, the social whirl with all that it comprehended, compared with an occasional dinner, a rare party, interminable evenings spent, by his own fireside, alone! Alone! Alone!

To be sure, Miss Carrington, and Miss Borden, and Miss Lashiel, and Miss Tilghman, would be available, when they were home. But the winter was when they went visiting, he remembered, from late November until early April, and, at that period, the town saw them but little. There was the Hampton Club, of course, but it was worse than nothing—an opportunity to get mellow and to gamble, innocent enough to those who were habituated to it, but dangerous to one who had fallen, by adversity, from better things....

However, Macloud would be there, shortly, thank God! And the dear girls were not going for a week or so, he hoped. And, when the worst came, he could retire to the peacefulness of his library and try to eke out a four months’ existence, with the books, and magazines and papers.

Moses held open the door, with a bow and a flourish, and the lights leaped out to meet him. It was some cheer, at least, to come home to a bright house, a full larder, faithful servants—and supper ready on the table, and tuned to even a Clubman’s taste.

“Moses, do you know if Miss Carrington’s at home?” he asked, the coffee on and his cigar lit. 187

“Yass, seh! her am home, seh, I seed she herse’f dis mornin’ cum down de parf from de front poach wid de dawg, seh.”

Croyden nodded and went across the hall to the telephone.

Miss Carrington, herself, answered his call.—Yes, she intended to be home all evening. She would be delighted to see him and to hear a full account of himself.

He was rather surprised at his own alacrity, in finishing his cigar and changing his clothes—and he wondered whether it was the girl, or the companionship, or the opportunity to be free of himself? A little of all three, he concluded.... But, especially, the girl, as she came from the drawing-room to meet him.

“So you have really returned,” she said, as he bowed over her slender fingers. “We were beginning to fear you had deserted us.”

“You are quite too modest,” he replied. “You don’t appreciate your own attractions.”

The “you” was plainly singular, but she refused to see it.

“Our own attractions require us to be modest,” she returned; “with a—man of the world.”

“Don’t!” he laughed. “Whatever I may have been, I am, now, a man of Hampton.”

She shook her head. “You can never be a man of Hampton.”

“Why not, if I live among you?” 188

“If you live here—take on our ways, our beliefs, our mode of thinking, you may, in a score of years, grow like us, outwardly; but, inwardly, where the true like must start, never!”

“How do we differ?”

“Ask me something easier! You’ve been bred differently, used to different things, to doing them in a different way. We do things slowly, leisurely, with a fine disregard of time, you, with the modern rush, and bustle, and hurry. You are a man of the world—I repeat it—up to the minute in everything—never lagging behind, unless you wish. You never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day. We never do anything to-day that can be put off till to-morrow.”

“And which do you prefer, the to-day or the to-morrow?” he asked.

“It depends on my humor, and my location, at the time—though, I must admit, the to-day makes for thrift, and business, and success in acquiring wealth.”

“And success also in getting rid of it. It is a return toward the primitive condition—the survival of the fittest. There must be losers as well as acquirers.”

“There’s the pity of it!” she exclaimed, “that one must lose in order that another may gain.”

“But as we are not in Utopia or Altruria,” he smiled, “it will continue so to be. Why, even in Baltimore, they——” 189

“Oh, Baltimore is only an overgrown country town!” she exclaimed.

“Granted!” he replied. “With half a million population, it is as provincial as Hampton, and thanks God for it—the most smug, self-satisfied, self-sufficient municipality in the land, with its cobblestones, its drains-in-the-gutters, its how much-holier-than-thou air about everything.”

“But it has excellent railway facilities!” she laughed.

“Because it happens to be on the main line between Washington and the North.”

“At least, the people are nice, barring a few mushrooms who are making a great to-do.”

“Yes, the people are delightful!—And, when it comes to mushrooms, Northumberland has Baltimore beaten to a frazzle. We raise a fresh crop every night.”

“Northumberland society must be exceedingly large!” she laughed.

“It is—but it’s not overcrowded. About as many die every day, as are born every night; and, at any rate, they don’t interfere with those who really belong—except to increase prices, and the cost of living, and clog the avenue with automobiles.”

“That is progress!”

“Yes, it’s progress! but whither it leads no one knows—to the devil, likely—or a lemon garden.” 190

“‘Blessed are the lemons on earth, for they shall be peaches in Heaven!’” she quoted.

“What a glorious peach your Miss Erskine will be,” he replied.

“I’m afraid you don’t appreciate the great honor the lady did you, in condescending to view the treasures of Clarendon, and to talk about them afterward. To hear her, she is the most intimate friend you have in Hampton.”

“Good!” he said, “I’m glad you told me. Somehow, I’m always drawing lemons.”

“Am I a lemon?” she asked, abruptly.

“You! do you think you are?”

“One can never know.”

“Have I drawn you?” he inquired.

“Quite immaterial to the question, which is: A lemon or not a lemon?”

“If you could but see yourself at this moment, you would not ask,” he said, looking at her with amused scrutiny.

The lovely face, the blue black hair, the fine figure in the simple pink organdie, the slender ankles, the well-shod feet—a lemon!

“But as I can’t see myself, and have no mirror handy, your testimony is desired,” she insisted. “A lemon or not a lemon?”

“A lemon!” he answered.

“Then you can’t have any objection——”

“If you bring Miss Erskine in?” he interrupted. “Nay! Nay! Nay! Nay!” 191

“——if I take you there for a game of Bridge—shall we go this very evening?”

“If you wish,” he answered.

She laughed. “I don’t wish—and we are growing very silly. Come, tell about your Annapolis trip. You stayed a great while.”

“Something more than three weeks!”

“It’s a queer old town, Annapolis—they call it the ‘Finished City!’ It’s got plenty of landmarks, and relics, but nothing more. If it were not for the State Capitol and Naval Academy, it would be only a lot of ruins, lost in the sand. In midsummer, it’s absolutely dead. No one on the streets, no one in the shops, no one any place.—Deserted—until there’s a fire. Then you should see them come out!”

“That is sufficiently expressed!” laughed Croyden. “But, with the autumn and the Academy in session, the town seemed very much alive. We sampled ‘Cheney’s Best,’ Wegard’s Cakes, and saw the Custard-and-Cream Chapel.”

“You’ve been to Annapolis, sure!” she replied. “There’s only one thing more—did you see Paul Jones?”

He shook his head. “We missed him.”

“Which isn’t surprising. You can’t find him without the aid of a detective or a guide.”

“Then, who ever finds him?”

“No one!—and there is the shame. We accepted the vast labors and the money of our 192 Ambassador to France in locating the remains of America’s first Naval Hero; we sent an Embassy and a warship to bring them back; we received them with honor, orated over them, fired guns over them. And then, when the spectators had departed—assuming they were to be deposited in the crypt of the Chapel—we calmly chucked them away on a couple of trestles, under a stairway in Bancroft Hall, as we would an old broom or a tin can. That’s our way of honoring the only Naval Commander we had in the Revolution. It would have been better, much better, had we left him to rest in the quiet seclusion of his grave in France—lost, save in memory, with the halo of the past and privacy of death around him.”

“And why didn’t we finish the work?” said Croyden. “Why bring him here, with the attendant expense, and then stop, just short of completion? Why didn’t we inter him in the Chapel (though, God save me from burial there), or any place, rather than on trestles under a stairway in a midshipmen’s dormitory?”

“Because the appropriation was exhausted, or because the Act wasn’t worded to include burial, or because the Superintendent didn’t want the bother, or because it was a nuisance to have the remains around—or some other absurd reason. At all events, he is there in the cellar, and he is likely to stay there, till Bancroft Hall is swallowed up by the Bay. The junket to France, the parade, 193 the speeches, the spectacular part are over, so, who cares for the entombment, and the respect due the distinguished dead?”

“I don’t mean to be disrespectful,” he observed, “but it’s hard luck to have one’s bones disturbed, after more than a hundred years of tranquillity, to be conveyed clear across the Atlantic, to be orated over, and sermonized over, and, then, to be flung aside like old junk and forgot. However, we have troubles of our own—I know I have—more real than Paul Jones! He may be glad he’s dead, so he won’t have any to worry over. In fact, it’s a good thing to be dead—one is saved from a heap of worry.”

She looked at him, without replying.

“What’s the use?” he said. “A daily struggle to procure fuel sufficient to keep up the fire.”

“What’s the use of anything! Why not make an end of life, at once?” she asked.

“Sometimes, I’m tempted,” he admitted. “It’s the leap in the dark, and no returning, that restrains, I reckon—and the fact that we must face it alone. Otherwise——”

She laughed softly. “Otherwise death would have no terrors! You have begged the question, or what amounts to it. But, to return to Annapolis; what else did you see?”

“You have been there?”

“Many times.”

“Then you know what I saw,” he replied. “I 194 had no wonderful adventures. This isn’t the day of the rapier and the mask.”

She half closed her eyes and looked at him through the long lashes.

“What were you doing down on Greenberry Point?” she demanded.

“How did you know?” he asked, surprised.

“Oh! very naturally. I was in Annapolis—I saw your name on the register—I inquired—and I had the tale of the camp. No one, however, seemed to think it queer!” laughing.

“Why should they? Camping out is entirely natural,” Croyden answered.

“With the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs?”

“We were in his party!”

“A party which until five days ago he had not joined—at least, so the Superintendent told me, when I dined at his house. He happened to mention your name, found I knew you—and we gossiped. Perhaps we shouldn’t, but we did.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“Nothing! he didn’t seem even to wonder at your being there——”

“But you did?”

“It’s the small town in me, I suppose—to be curious about other people and their business; and it was most suspicious.”

“What was most suspicious?” he asked.

“Your actions. First, you hire a boat and cross 195 the Bay direct from Hampton to Annapolis. Second, you procure, through Senator Rickrose, a permit from the Secretary of the Navy to camp on Greenberry Point. Third, you actually do camp, there, for nearly, or quite three weeks. Query:—Why? Why go clear to the Western Shore, and choose a comparatively inaccessible and exposed location on United States property, if the idea were only a camp? Why not camp over on Kent Island, or on this coast? Anywhere, within a few miles of Hampton, there are scores of places better adapted than Greenberry Point.”

“You should be a story teller!” he laughed. “Your imagination is marvelous. With a series of premises, you can reach whatever conclusion you wish—you’re not bound by the probabilities.”

“You’re simply obscuring the point,” she insisted. “In this instance, my premises are facts which are not controverted. You admit them to be correct. So, why? Why?——” She held up her hand. “Don’t answer! I’m not asking for information. I don’t want to be told. I’m simply ‘chaffing of you,’ don’t you know!”

“With just a lingering curiosity, however,” he added.

“A casual curiosity, rather,” she amended.

“Which, some time, I shall gratify. You’ve trailed me down—we were on Greenberry Point for a purpose, but nothing has come of it, yet—and it’s likely a failure.” 196

“My dear Mr. Croyden, I don’t wish to know. It was a mistake to refer to it. I should simply have forgot what I heard in Annapolis—I’ll forget now, if you will permit.”

“By no means, Miss Carrington. You can’t forget, if you would—and I would not have you, if you could. Moreover, I inherited it along with Clarendon, and, as you were my guide to the place, it’s no more than right that you should know. I think I shall confide in you—no use to protest, it’s got to come!” he added.

“You are determined?—Very well, then, come over to the couch in the corner, where we can sit close and you can whisper.”

He arose, with alacrity. She put out her hand and led him—and he suffered himself to be led.

“Now!” when they were seated, “you may begin. Once upon a time——” and laughed, softly. “I’ll take this, if you’ve no immediate use for it,” she said, and released her hand from his.

“For the moment,” he said. “I shall want it back, presently, however.”

“Do you, by any chance, get all you want?” she inquired.

“Alas! no! Else I would have kept what I already had.”

She put her hands behind her, and faced around.

“Begin, sir!” she said. “Begin! and try to be serious.”

“Well,—once upon a time——” Then he 197 stopped. “I’ll go over to the house and get the letter—it will tell you much better than I can. You will wait here, right here, until I return?”

She looked at him, with a tantalizing smile.

“Won’t it be enough, if I am here when you return?” she asked.

When he came out on the piazza the rain had ceased, the clouds were gone, the temperature had fallen, and the stars were shining brightly in a winter sky.

He strode quickly down the walk to the street and crossed it diagonally to his own gates. As he passed under the light, which hung near the entrance, a man walked from the shadow of the Clarendon grounds and accosted him.

“Mr. Croyden, I believe?” he said.

Croyden halted, abruptly, just out of distance.

“Croyden is my name?” he replied, interrogatingly.

“With your permission, I will accompany you to your house—to which I assume you are bound—for a few moments’ private conversation.”

“Concerning what?” Croyden demanded.

“Concerning a matter of business.”

“My business or yours?”

“Both!” said the man, with a smile.

Croyden eyed him suspiciously. He was about thirty years of age, tall and slender, was well dressed, in dark clothes, a light weight top-coat, and a derby hat. His face was ordinary, however, 198 and Croyden had no recollection of ever having seen it—certainly not in Hampton.

“I’m not in the habit of discussing business with strangers, at night, nor of taking them to my house,” he answered, brusquely. “If you have anything to say to me, say it now, and be brief. I’ve no time to waste.”

“Some one may hear us,” the man objected.

“Let them—I’ve no objection.”

“Pardon me, but I think, in this matter, you would have objection.”

“You’ll say it quickly, and here, or not at all,” snapped Croyden.

The man shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s scarcely a subject to be discussed on the street,” he observed, “but, if I must, I must. Did you ever hear of Robert Parmenter? Oh! I see that you have! Well, the business concerns a certain letter—need I be more explicit?”

“If you wish to make your business intelligible.”

The fellow shrugged his shoulders again.

“As you wish,” he said, “though it only consumes time, and I was under the impression that you were in a hurry. However: To repeat—the business concerns a letter, which has to do with a certain treasure buried long ago, on Greenberry Point, by the said Robert Parmenter. Do I make myself plain, now, sir?”

“Your language is entirely intelligible—though I cannot answer for the facts recited.” 199

The man smiled imperturbably, and went on:

“The letter in question having come into your possession recently, you, with two companions, spent three weeks encamped on Greenberry Point, ostensibly for your health, or the night air, or anything else that would deceive the Naval authorities. During which time, you dug up the entire Point, dragged the waters immediately adjoining—and then departed, very strangely choosing for it a time of storm and change of weather. My language is intelligible, thus far?”

Croyden nodded—rather amused. Evidently, the thieves had managed to communicate with a confederate, and this was a hold-up. They assumed he had been successful.

“Therefore, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that your search was not ineffectual. In plain words, you have recovered the treasure.”

The man paused, waiting for an answer.

Croyden only smiled, and waited, too.

“Very good!—we will proceed,” said the stranger. “The jewels were found on Government land. It makes no difference whether recovered on the Point or on the Bay—the law covering treasure trove, I am informed, doesn’t apply. The Government is entitled to the entire find, it being the owner in fee of the land.”

“You talk like a lawyer!” said Croyden.

The stranger bowed. “I have devoted my spare moments to the study of the law——” 200

“And how to avoid it,” Croyden interjected.

The other bowed again.

“And also how to prevent others from avoiding it,” he replied, suggestively. “Let us take up that phase, if it please you.”

“And if it doesn’t please?” asked Croyden, suppressing an inclination to laugh.

“Then let us take it up, any way—unless you wish to forfeit your find to the Government.”

“Proceed!” said Croyden. “We are arriving, now, at the pith of the matter. What do you offer?”

“We want an equal divide. We will take Parmenter’s estimate and multiply it by two, though jewels have appreciated more than that in valuation. Fifty thousand pounds is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which will total, according to the calculation, half a million dollars,—one half of which amount you pay us as our share.”

“Your share! Why don’t you call it properly—blackmail?” Croyden demanded.

“As you wish!” the other replied, airily. “If you prefer blackmail to share, it will not hinder the contract—seeing that it is quite as illegal on your part as on ours. Share merely sounds a little better but either obtains the same end. So, suit yourself. Call it what you will—but pay.”

“Pay—or what?”

“Pay—or lose everything!” was the answer. “If you are not familiar with the law covering 201 the subject under discussion, let me enlighten you.”

“Thunder! how you do roll it out!” laughed Croyden. “Get on! man, get on!”

“I was endeavoring to state the matter succinctly,” the stranger replied, refusing to be hurried or flustered. “The Common Law and the practice of the Treasury Department provide, that all treasure found on Government land or within navigable waters, is Government property. If declared by the finder, immediately, he shall be paid such reward as the Secretary may determine. If he does not declare, and is informed on, the informer gets the reward. You will observe that, under the law, you have forfeited the jewels—I fancy I do not need to draw further deductions.”

“No!—it’s quite unnecessary,” Croyden remarked. “Your fellow thieves went into that phase (good word, I like it!) rather fully, down on Greenberry Point. Unluckily, they fell into the hands of the police, almost immediately, and we have not been able to continue the conversation.”

“I have the honor to continue the conversation—and, in the interim, you have found the treasure. So, Parmenter’s letter won’t be essential—the facts, circumstances, your own and Mr. Macloud’s testimony, will be sufficient to prove the Government’s case. Then, as you are aware, it’s pay or go to prison for larceny.”

“There is one very material hypothesis, which you assume as a fact, but which is, unfortunately, 202 not a fact,” said Croyden. “We did not find the treasure.”

The man laughed, good-humoredly.

“Naturally!” he replied. “We don’t ask you to acknowledge the finding—just pay over the quarter of a million and we will forget everything.”

“My good man, I’m speaking the truth!” Croyden answered. “Maybe it’s difficult for you to recognize, but it’s the truth, none the less. I only wish I had the treasure—I think I’d be quite willing to share it, even with a blackmailer!”

The man laughed, again.

“I trust it will give no offence if I say I don’t believe you.”

“You can believe what you damn please!” Croyden retorted.

And, without more ado, he turned his back and went up the path to Clarendon.