“I let that fellow talk too much,” said Nat, as he walked hurriedly away with his bundles in his arms. “He knows that I want to dig in the ground, or else I wouldn’t have called for these things. I must get back to my camp and go to work as soon as possible, or else I shall have some one else on my back.”
Nat was now harassed by another fear and to save his life he could not shake it off. That storekeeper at Manchester knew there was no such thing as ghosts in the woods, he knew that Peleg had been frightened away by the bare mention of such objects as might be around in the event of their search proving successful, and how did he know but that the storekeeper and some one like him, might take it into their heads to come up and look into the matter. He was now more afraid of those men than he was of Jonas and Caleb.
“I tell you it all depends upon getting my work done quick,” said Nat, turning about and looking at the store. “That storekeeper will come up there for fifteen or twenty—By gracious! I wish I had that money dug up now.”
The longer Nat dwelt upon the matter the greater haste seemed necessary and the longer the distance was to the Nickerson woods. He broke into a dog trot before he was fairly out of sight of the city, and by the time he climbed the fence that threaded the bushes he was nearly exhausted. Everything there was just as he left it; but so out of breath was Nat that he threw himself on his bed of boughs and heartily wished he possessed the strength of a dozen men. At length he sprang up and went to work. He must do something or else see his fortune slip through his grasp. He cut the lever with which to move the rock, trimmed it off neatly and catching up his pick-ax and spade he jumped across the brook and made his way up the hill. Hastily clearing away the bushes that had grown up around the rock he thrust his lever under one side of it, got under the other end, and to his surprise the rock moved with scarcely an effort on his part.
“Hail Columbia happy land!” gasped Nat, as he eased up for a moment on the lever and surged upon it to obtain a new hold upon the rock. “The thing moves, and that proves that it has been pried out of its bed before. Come out here and let us see what’s under you.”
The rock was heavier than Nat thought it was, but by dint of sheer hard work he finally succeeded in getting it out of its bed and moved away so that he could use his spade. To have seen him go about his work one would have thought he had an all day’s job before him and that he was to ask for his pay when his work was done. Although his face was very white and his hands trembled, he took a spadeful of earth before he threw it out, and once, when he saw the perspiration gathering upon him, he stopped, took off his hat and wiped his forehead ere he set in again.
“I just know there is something here, but I will take it easy and by the time I strike the money—but perhaps it isn’t money at all,” murmured Nat, pausing in his exertions to see how much he had accomplished. “Whatever there is, it has got to come out.”
Before Nat got down as far as he wanted to go he came to the conclusion that Mr. Nickerson must have thought that he had plenty of time at his disposal, for he dug down at least two feet before he struck anything. But the earth was soft, in all these years it had not become packed at all, and that showed that there had been somebody there before him. At length his spade hit something hard—something which he could not remove. He dug down by the side of it and then found that it was a board which completely filled up the space. To get the dirt off of the rest of the board was comparatively easy, and then Nat threw out his spade, stepped to one side and placed his hands under it. The sight that met his gaze was enough to deprive him of the little strength he had left. The space below him was literally filled up with bags—small bags, to be sure, but one of them was so heavy that when Nat came to lift it from its place and put it out of the hole so that he could examine it, he found that handling it was quite as much as he wanted to do.
“Hail Columbia happy land!” said Nat again. “I am in luck for once in my life. There is more than $5,000 in that bag.”
Nat followed the bag out of the hole, carefully untied the string with which it was closed and he was astonished at what he saw. The bag was filled with gold pieces, twenties and tens and fives down to ones. That one bag alone must have contained almost the sum he had named.