“Don’t—don’t, Dannie!” exclaimed Godfrey, casting frightened glances on all sides of him.
“Wal, ye know it as well as me, don’t ye? I’ll go with ye an’ do my share of the diggin’, but I won’t go alone—that’s flat!”
Godfrey groaned, and for a moment was on the point of backing squarely out, and saying that he didn’t believe that the barrel was there; and if it was it might stay there for all he would do toward digging it up. But he did not back out. He had the best of reasons for believing that the barrel was there, and that it was full of gold and silver. A little extra exertion might put him in possession of it. Perhaps with the very first blow of the shovel he might strike the treasure, and then his troubles would all be over. The visions of ease and happiness which this thought conjured up, gave zeal to his flagging spirits and courage to his heart; and picking up his hat, which had fallen from his head while he was dozing on the bench, he told Dan to lead on, and they would find that barrel if all the white things in the country should come there to scare them away.
Together they moved off in the darkness, and made their way to the lane behind the general’s barn, where Dan had hidden the spade in the fence corner.
It was the work of but a few seconds to find the implement, and then the father and son climbed the fence and struck off across the fields toward the potato-patch where the barrel was buried. When they reached it they found that the field was still planted to potatoes, and Dan noticed, with no little uneasiness, that it was closer to the house than he would like to have had it. The noise of the spade striking against the barrel—when they found it—or a word uttered in too loud a tone of voice, would arouse Don Gordon’s hounds, and they would alarm the family, the members of which they could see passing back and forth before the windows through which the lights shone.
“Say, pop,” said Dan, suddenly; “won’t they see the holes in the mornin’? An’ if they keep on findin’ ’em, won’t they think thar’s somethin’ up, an’ watch to see who it is that’s a diggin’ ’em?”
“No, they won’t, kase they won’t see ’em,” replied his father. “We’ll dig down till we find thar ain’t no bar’l thar, an’ then we’ll shove the dirt back again, an’ dig in some other place.”
“How deep’ll we have to go?”
“O, not much more’n the deepness of a bar’l, kase why, ye see Jordan wouldn’t have no time to dig a deep hole to kiver up the bar’l in, when he knowed that the Yanks was a comin’. He done a good thing fur us, Jordan did, in runnin’ away without tellin’ his missus whar that bar’l was hid. Now, Dannie, let’s try right here fust. Ye begin, kase yer the youngest, an’ I’ll set down an’ smoke an’ watch ye till yer tired. Now bar in mind that yer workin’ fur eighty thousand dollars! Throw it out with the fust shovelful an’ I’ll give ye half!”
One to have watched Dan’s movements would have thought that he meant to accomplish something. He peeled off his coat and threw it on the ground, dashed his hat down beside it, tucked up his sleeves, moistened his hands and brought them together with a loud slap, seized the shovel and thrust it twice into the ground, bringing out each time scarcely more than a good-sized handful of earth, and then stopped and looked all around the field as far as his eyes could reach in the darkness.