“Now everything depends upon my quickness,” said Nat, seating himself beside the bag and looking thoughtfully at the others. “What shall I do with them now that I have got them? I must put them somewhere else.”
Nat went about this work as though he could see into the future and knew what was going to happen there in his camp in less than ten minutes. He sprang into the hole again and as fast as he could raise the bags they came out on the earth he had shoveled up. Then he came out and running into his camp seized Peleg’s valise and emptied the contents upon the ground. It was better than nothing, although it would not hold more than two bags. The other one he carried under his arm and then began looking around for some place to hide them. It did not matter much where he put them so long as they could effectually hide the spot from curious eyes. At last he stopped before a huge log which had a quantity of leaves piled against it. To scrape those leaves away with his hands was an easy matter, and his bags were hastily put in, and yet there was enough for three others. They were quickly stowed away in the new place, and with the spade Nat made everything look as natural as it did before.
The next thing was to fill up the hole and restore the rock to its bed. It seemed to him that this was a task beyond his powers but perseverance conquers all obstacles, and when it was done he threw some leaves over the earth that was scattered around, put the branches back in their place and then he was tired enough to sit down; but there was still one thing that remained to be done. The contents of Peleg’s valise had to be returned, and when this was done, without any reference being made to the order in which his underwear was placed, and his spade and pick-ax had been brought under the lean-to and the ax hidden away in the bushes, Nat was ready to sit down and draw a long breath of relief.
“Hail Columbia, happy land!” said he to himself. “It is better to be born lucky than rich. There must be as much as thirty or forty thousand dollars in those bags. It is mine, Mr. Nickerson told me that he had no kith or kin to leave it to, and I will die before I will give it up. I am quite willing that anybody should come in here and go all over the woods, and if he did not see me hide the money he will have his trouble for his pains.”
While this thought was passing through his mind he heard a sudden rattling in the bushes behind him, and before he could start to his feet to see who it was, the branches parted and Jonas Keeler’s forbidding face came through. The face, half hidden by thick, bushy whiskers, did not look much as it did when Nat last saw him. There was an eager expression upon it, and his hands trembled so that he could scarcely take his rifle down from his shoulder.
“Well, sir, we have found you at last,” said Jonas, with a grin.
“Yes sir, you have found me at last,” repeated Nat, sinking back upon his bed of boughs again.
Just at that moment the bushes parted again and Caleb came out. He seemed more eager than his father was. He looked all around to make sure that there was no one else present, and then walked into the camp as though he had a right to.
“Thank goodness here’s a gun,” said he, and the tenderness with which he picked up his single barrel and looked it carefully over, would have led one to believe that it was worth money. “Did you see anything to shoot with it?”
“No,” replied Nat. “The woods were perfectly quiet last night.”