The first thing the ferryman did when he reached the cabin was to close and fasten the door, to prevent interruption, and the next to draw from his pocket the mysterious letter, which he spread upon the table before him.
To make himself master of its contents was a work of no little difficulty. Silas did not know much about books, and, besides, some of the characters that were intended to represent letters were so badly printed that it was hard to tell what they were intended for. He read as follows:
"December 15—In the Mountings.
"I write this to inform whoever finds it that I have a secret to tell you. I was born in Europe, and am now forty years of age. I am a gentleman, and my father is a rich man and a large land-owner. I am the second son, and fell in love with a girl when I was twenty years of age.
"Everything went well till my older brother came home from the war, and when she found out that I was not entitled to the estates, she left me, and went to concerts and balls with my brother, and that was something I could not stand. So I sent her a bottle of sody-water, with my best wishes, and I put in strickning, and the next day she was dead. The doctors said she died of heart disease, but I knew better. So I told my father that I was going to America. So he gave me five hundred pounds in money—"
"Five hundred pounds of money!" exclaimed Silas, after he had spelled the words over three times to satisfy himself that he had made no mistake. "How did he ever make out to carry that heft of greenbacks clear across the ocean and up into these mountings? If I find it, I'll have to bring it down on my wagon, won't I? And where'll I put it after I get it so that it will be safe? That's what's a bothering of me now."
Silas was already beginning to feel the responsibilities that weigh upon capitalists, one of whom assures us that he finds it harder work to take care of his money than it was to accumulate it. Silas made a note of all the good hiding-places which he could recall to mind on the spur of the moment, and then went on with his reading:
—"and the next day I shipped for New York. I wish I had never done it. A coming over the ocean, I made the acquaintance of a man who coaxed me to go to Californy with him, and there we fell in with two more who were as bad as we was, and we went into a bank there, and took out seventy thousand dollars. So we went to Canady, and stayed there till the country got too hot for us, and then we come to these mountings. So we went along till we come to the old Indian road. One day my chum dropped his pipe down a crack in the rocks, and he said he would have it again if he broke his neck a getting it. So he slid down about twelve feet, and there was as nice a cave in the rock as you ever see.
"There is a crack in the ground that goes down about twelve feet, and then you come onto the level, and can go a hundred feet before you come to the place where a lot of sand and stones has fell in. The cave has been lived in before, by robbers most likely, 'cause we found a lot of money and some guns and pistols there, of a kind that we never see before. I and my chum lived in this cave about three weeks, and then we started to go to the lake.
"When we got to the top of the Indian road, I refused to go any farther, and when my chum made as if he were going to shoot me for being a coward, I give him a shove, and down he went into the gulf. He's there now, where nobody will ever find him; but his hant (ghost) comes back to me every day and night, and that's why I am going to jump into the lake—just to get away from that hant. Now I must tell you about the money.
"There is twelve thousand in bills, and about three hundred in gold and silver. It is in a leather satchel in the bottom. It has a false plate on the bottom, put on with screws. And there you will find the money. I will and bequeath it to you and your heirs and assanees forever. I leave this in a wood-pile, and the one who draws the wood will find it.
"The cave is about a quarter of a mile from the wood-pile, near a large hemlock tree. There is a rope that goes down into the cave, and it hangs under the roots of the tree. Look close or you can't find it. I leave a map of the route from the pile of wood to the cave in this letter. I hope the hant won't bother you while you are getting the money, as he has bothered me ever since I have been writing this letter.
"Julius Jones."
Words would fail us, were we to attempt to tell just how Silas felt after he had finished reading this interesting communication. He hoped it might be true—that there was a cave with a fortune in it which he could have for the finding of it—and consequently it was very easy for him to believe that it was true; but there were one or two things that ought to have attracted his attention and aroused his suspicions at once.
In the first place, there was the document itself. It was now the latter part of August, and if the letter was left in the wood-pile on the day it purported to be written, it had been exposed for eight long months to some of the most furious snow and rain storms that had ever visited that section of the country, and yet the writing looked fresh, and there was not a single wrinkle or even the suspicion of a stain upon the envelope. It could not have been cleaner if it had but just been taken out of the post office.
Another thing, the writer would have found it an exceedingly difficult task to drown himself in the lake during the month of December, for he would have been obliged to cut through nearly two feet of ice in order to reach water.
But the ferryman did not notice these little discrepancies. He gave his imagination full swing, and worked himself into such a state of excitement that his nerves were all unstrung; consequently, when hasty steps sounded outside the cabin, and Dan's heavy hand fumbled with the latch, it was all Silas could do to repress the cry of alarm that trembled on his lips as he sprang to his feet.