Clutterbuck's Treasure

"Treasure is vanity, vanity, vanity!" cried one of the Mahatmas.

"Gold is dross, dross, dross!" wailed a second.

"Nevertheless, I will show you where to find it!" sang the third, in a mournful monotone. "Come!"

I dreamed that I followed the Mahatma back, earthwards, and we alighted in Clutterbuck's garden. He did but turn over one spadeful of earth, and there lay revealed a sack of glittering gold pieces. Instantly the two other Mahatmas flew shrieking to the treasure and fought for it, tearing the black mantles from one another's shoulders. But the third slew them both from behind, and, seizing the sack of gold, fled over land and sea, I, shrieking, after him.

But just as I was overtaking him he turned, and I saw his face—it was James Strong. At the same moment he cried aloud, and said: "For treasure I have sinned and murdered, and lo! I have bartered my soul in vain—for see what this gold of yours is!"

With the words he poured the gold out of the sack's mouth, and behold! it was ashes, and they fell hissing into the sea.

In another of my dreams I was busily digging, while the dog Ginger watched my efforts. Suddenly I turned up a sod in which lay a piece of bread, and in the bread was folded a cheque for one hundred thousand pounds; but even as I read the figures, and was about to cry aloud for joy, the dog snatched both bread and paper from my hand, and swallowed them.

All this dreaming went to prove that I was far more interested and influenced by Jack's rather brilliant idea than I had chosen to show; his suggestion was on my mind and had "murdered sleep," quiet, solid sleep, such as I usually indulged in. Consequently, I was up very early on the following morning in order to set about putting the new idea to a trial. I hurried through breakfast, and was out of the hotel and busy at work in the garden before Jack was dressed.

First I tried the trees.

There was a willow, a fine tree with two big branches, almost as large as the parent stem, about ten feet from the ground. There was no excrescence from this tree small enough to hang the picture upon, and I passed on to the next, a poplar. Here, at about five feet from the earth, there was a twig from which the picture might be got to hang in a lopsided kind of way; but the twig was evidently a young shoot, and had probably sprung into existence since the picture had been taken to Hogland and buried, so that I spared myself a seven-foot dig beneath that poplar.

Then there was a lime, a small one, near the end of the garden; and into the trunk of this tree, on the wall side, I discovered that a nail had been knocked. I grew hot and cold at the sight, for I thought I had "struck oil" at last.

But, alas! when I had hung the picture by its little ring to this nail, and tried to get my face where the eyes would be fixed upon it, I found that the portrait glared at a spot about half-way down the brick wall, and not at any place on the ground whereinto a man might sink a spade.

There were no more trees, and I now turned my attention to the wall itself, and looked for nails up and down, and from end to end. I found one, to my delight, and having hung up the portrait, was engaged in the occupation of lying on my stomach and wooing the stony glare of old Clutterbuck's lack-lustre eyes, when Jack mounted the wall just above it, and nearly fell off again for laughing at the ridiculous spectacle which he said I presented. However, I focussed the eyes, and planted a stick in the exact spot.

"It's the only nail in the garden, Jack," I cried excitedly. "I do believe we've hit off the place at last!"

"Good!" said Jack grimly; "now dig for all you're worth!"

I did dig. I dug that seven-foot hole as though at the bottom of it some terrible earthworm had seized by the throat all that I held most dear in the world. Never were seven feet of earth displaced in quicker time by human energy.

But there was nothing there.

"Dig another three-foot-six!" said Jack from the wall. "The rhyme may mean 'Three foot six, and double that besides'—that is, ten feet six in all."

Breathless, despondent, stiff, half dead with fatigue, I dug on till the water was up to the top of my boots; it was of no use.

"I won't dig another inch!" I groaned; "not to-day, at all events."

"Come out then, and consult," said Jack. Even he seemed dejected with the last failure.

I came out, dead beat.

"Are there no more nails in the wall, anywhere?" he asked.

"Not one," said I. "I couldn't dig again to-day if there were!"

"Have you tried the trees?"

"Yes; there's nothing to hang the confounded thing from on any of them."

"I see the cut-up trunk of a felled tree against the shed, over there. When was that one cut down?"

I didn't know.

"Ask old Baines," said Jack.

Baines was within doors, though Ginger was with me; the dog had been a terrible nuisance all day, licking my face when I had to lie on my waistcoat in order to focus those eyes, and while I was digging the huge hole standing at the brink and whining and howling as though he expected me to unearth a huge cat for his delectation. As a matter of fact, he would have run away if a mouse had jumped out. Ginger was not a brave dog; he was too benevolent to be really brave.

I went and fetched Baines, and asked him who had cut down the tree, and when and why?

Baines said that he had felled it a year ago at his master's orders.

"What for?" I asked. But Baines did not know that. Only, he said, he had strict orders not to burn the wood, or even touch it, for some reason or other.

This seemed rather curious, and I reported to Jack on the wall.

"Great scissors!" said that most ingenious individual; "go and see if there's a nail in the trunk!"

To my astonishment and delight, there was a nail; I shouted this news to Jack.

"Oh, hang it all, I'm coming over!" cried Jack; "this is too exciting for sitting on walls," he added, as he joined me and looked at and felt the nail for himself. "Where was this tree?" I took Jack and showed him the big hole in the centre of the garden out of which I had dug the root.

"Come on," said he; "we must have that root in again! Shove!"

Together we shoved the stump back into its own place, taking care to fit it into the hole exactly as it had rested there in life, and to keep its sawn surface level with the earth in order that the sundered portions of the trunk might be made to stand one upon another and all upon the parent stump, straight and without tipping forward or backward.

CHAPTER XLII

ALL OVER BUT–

Then we brought the round thick logs which had formed the trunk, and which had been sawn into lengths of about four feet, and piled them one on top of another in their own order, which was obvious and unmistakable on account of the lessening girth of the trunk as it went higher. We piled three of these, fitting them one upon the other as they had stood in life, and the nail was in the fourth, with which we crowned the edifice, Jack standing upon a step-ladder and I handing up the logs.

"There!" he said, when he had built up the edifice to the height of some fifteen feet; "there's our tree as it stood in life, wobbly, no doubt, and insecure; but it will bear the picture though it wouldn't stand much of north-easter. Hand up the work of art."

We hung up the portrait, and again I lay on the ground here and there and ogled the hideous thing until I had wooed its eyes to meet my own.

Then we dug together. Jack had thrown all ridiculous fastidiousness to the winds of heaven, and helped me like a man and a sensible being.

Together we dug, and the hole rapidly grew, and with it grew also our own excitement and Ginger's, who looked on whining, as before, for the game that we were to start from our burrow for him to run away from. We had had no lunch, and the afternoon was fleeting fast; but we dug on.

Now the grave was two feet deep, and now four, now five. I had never felt so excited as this, even at that supreme moment when my fingers touched the tin box in the African veldt.

Now the hole was six feet in depth, and Jack's head, when he stood up, was just below the earth-level. Ginger, in his excitement, pulled Jack's cap off and laid it on the ground beside him, probably determined that if we were to disappear altogether, he would preserve at least a memento of us to swear by.

Six feet and a half, and now my spade (it wasmine; I am glad it was mine), my spade struck against something hard and metallic.

"Hullo!" cried Jack, who heard the sound.