Half dead with fatigue, I sank down again, with a sigh, upon the bench. The fatigue I should not have minded so much, but for the sore heart in my bosom. That one’s comrade should desert one! That was the last straw! I almost wished that we had never seen the place!
I buried my face in my hands in the effort to keep back the tears, for, as I have said already, I don’t like girls who cry. I resolved anew that I would not permit myself to grow discouraged, that I would keep right on trying. And as for Tom Chester—
“What’s the matter, little girl?” asked a voice, so near that it fairly made me jump. But it was not the voice—oh, no, quite a different voice from the one which had made me jump the day before. “Not cryin’?”
I looked up, and there was Silas Tunstall! He was dressed exactly as he had been the day before, only his white trousers were a little more soiled than they had been then, and his face wore the self-same smirk, and his whiskers were raggeder than ever and his little black eyes brighter and creepier. The rest of his face didn’t seem to fit his eyes, somehow; one had an impression of the same sort of contradiction which a wolf’s eyes in a sheep’s face would occasion.
“Not cryin’!” he repeated, eyeing me narrowly, while I sat fairly gasping with astonishment, not unmixed with fear. And then he looked about him at the signs of my afternoon’s labour. “Been diggin’, hev ye? Lookin’ fer the treasure, mebbe! Oh, yes, the rose of Sharon!” and he glanced at the shrub which stood tall and brown in the centre of the circle of upturned earth. Then he threw back his head and laughed.
But the moment had given me time to collect my scattered wits. My fear of him had passed, and in its place came a hot resolve to make the most of this encounter—to draw some advantage from it, if I could. If he really knew where the treasure was—well, surely my wits were as good as his!
“Yes, it’s a rose of Sharon, Mr. Tunstall,” I said, as calmly as I could. “You remember what the key said—‘The rose of Sharon guards the place,’ and so on. Of course I’m trying to find the treasure. You don’t blame me for that, do you?”
“Oh, no,” he answered, slowly, evidently surprised at my loquacity—which, indeed, rather surprised myself. “Oh, no; can’t say thet I do.”
“It’s such a beautiful old place—we have all fallen in love with it,” I continued earnestly, in my best society manner.
“O’ course; o’ course,” he agreed. “Most anybody would. Go ahead an’ enj’y it.”