"But tell me," I interrupted, "have you found any of these things?"
"I have found these treasures time and again. Some of them are now in the British Museum, and the money for them in my cave at the Phoul-a-Phooka with the other valuables, save those which I gave to my little lady. My storehouse is in the loneliest spot, where the timorous dare not venture, where the wild horse of the legend keeps guard for me. Once I brought my little lady there, and her eyes were so dazzled she covered them with her hands."
I listened as in a dream.
"But gold?" I asked, in an awe-stricken voice. "Have you found—"
"About a hundred ounces," he replied, "of genuine pure gold. But what is a hundred ounces where tons, perhaps, lie buried?"
He sprang up and paced the room, a fever, almost of insanity, glowing on his cheeks and in his eyes. I watched with a new interest this man, who was making the hills and streams of his loved Ireland yield up this treasure.
"It seems like a fairy-tale," I said.
"It is not fairy gold," Niall cried, with a grim smile; "and it has cost me years of slavery. I have guarded the secret with my life. I have spent long, lonely years in this cheerless cabin, haunting the streams by night, washing and rewashing the precious clay in the chill dawn, testing the gold in the fire of yonder hearth, often when the rest of the world was sleeping. Gold has been my idol, my one devotion."
"Do you get the gold in large pieces?"
"In every size, from the tiniest sparkle worth about sixpence to a lump worth several shillings."