“Mr. M. W. H. lives within two hundred yards of the spot, and heard distinctly the noise of the axes. As this was unusual at such an hour, he and his son went out to investigate. They found the three men at work digging, but as they were on other property, decided not to disturb them.
“After hours of hard work, the treasure-delvers at last struck metal. Feverishly they cleared out the impeding earth, and speedily laid bare a much-rusted iron box. In a state of intense excitement they lifted it to the surface, and leaving the hole as it was hurriedly dragged it away.
“After going a short distance toward the city, they stopped for consultation. The third man was paid, and directed to go home and keep his mouth shut.
“Green and Winkey laboured painfully home with the box, and before morning succeeded in getting it into Green’s room.
“Here they hurriedly removed the lid, whose lock and hinge had rusted off, and there before them lay a fortune in Spanish doubloons.”
The fortune, reader, as I have already stated—knowing, as I well do, all the outs and ins of the matter—was not such a wondrous one after all. But as what followed forms a rather curious story of human credulity and over-confidence, I must tell it briefly.
To begin with, then:—Green and Winkey were of opinion that as soon as the owner of the property on which the old tree stood discovered the find he would claim the gold, so they decided that the safest plan was to get it away out of Fernandina with all speed. But as Green could not go from home just then, but had the utmost confidence in Winkey, it was decided that the latter should start at once for Brunswick, he—Green—to join him later on, when they could amicably divide the spoil.
This was playing at the game of confidence with a vengeance, and we shall soon see what came of it.
The baggage-master at Fernandina distinctly remembers checking the luggage, and wondering at the same time how a man in Winkey’s poor station of life came to have so many trunks. The fact was that Winkey had put the gold in several boxes, so as to distribute the weight, and thus evade suspicion.
And now Green lived for a time in a kind of fool’s paradise, building castles in the air both by day and long into the night after going to bed. He also threw out many mysterious hints to his friends, though he told them nothing definite. Only he wanted them to know that he would soon be far above poverty, and that he need trouble himself but little more about work or business either.