"Like all whites," answered Stuart, striving to talk in the character of the negro horse-boy, "he wants something he has no right to have."
"And what is that?"
"Information. He says he is a military strategist, and is going to make La Ferrière, up there, a modern fort."
"He will never get there," said one of the soldiers.
"You think not?"
"It is sure that he will not get there. Permission is refused always, Yes. The General is afraid lest a 'white' should find the buried money."
"Christophe's treasure?" queried the boy, innocently. He had never heard of this treasure before, but rightly guessed that if it were supposed to be hidden in the Citadel of the Black Emperor, it must have been placed there by no one but the grim old tyrant himself.
"But surely. Yes. You, in the south"—Stuart had volunteered the information that he came from the southern part of the island—"have you not heard the story of Dimanche (Sunday) Esnan?"
"I never heard it, No," Stuart answered.
"It was of strange, Yes," the soldier proceeded. "Christophe was rich, ah, how rich! He had all the money of the republic. He spent it like an emperor. You shall see for yourself, if you look, what Christophe spent in building palaces, but no one shall say how much he spent on his own pleasures. He had a court, like the great courts of Europe, and not a 'white' in them. Ah, he was very rich and powerful, Christophe. It is said that, when he died, he left 65,000,000 gourdes (then worth about $15,000,000) and this he buried, should he need money in order to escape. But, as even an ignorant like you will know, he did not escape."