["Good luck! Good luck!" shouted Doby], not at all surprised to see that his father and the parson had followed him and were now near enough to ask, "What are you up to?"
"I've found the thing I most need—a really good knife. Bring on a pie! I can cut it. Or I can skin a rabbit. I can whittle anything." He looked at the parson. "Do you suppose that it will be right for me to keep this knife?"
The parson reassured him. "Although the laws of treasure-trove are complicated, I am glad to be able to tell you that in this case—in most cases like yours—finding is keeping."
"I suppose that is because there are no Mound-Builders left," reasoned Doby, trying the edge of his knife on his thumb. "What became of them?"
Doctor Cutler answered: "Perhaps some powerful enemy came along and killed them all. Perhaps some dreadful disease overtook them and they perished. Perhaps they were akin to the southern people—Aztecs and others—whom the Spaniards discovered in the tropics. They may have heard about their own kin far away. And then they may in time have gathered their goods together and floated down the river."
"Ha!" cried Doby, "that was sensible. If they were clever enough to build all those fine mounds, I know they were adventurous and emigrated down the river beautiful. I hope that is what they did. I'm glad they left this knife for me." Then he turned over his digging-stone. "This little hatchet they might have made also."
The parson shook his head. "No; you must have pried that out of the river mouth. Those stone hatchets were made by prehistoric men who lived ages before the Mound-Builders' time."
"O—oh!" gasped Doby, "o—oh! the stone-hatchet men lived a long, long time before the Mound-Builders came. The Mound-Builders lived a long, long time before the Indians came. The Indians were here a long, long time before we came. Everything is so old—old—old— that I can't think how old. If this country is so old—old—old, why do we call it the new West?"
"Because it is new to us. The West is new in the same way that this day is new. It is full of fresh promise for you and for me and for our race. Some day this will be the very heart of America!"