"And you are not afraid to live here all by yourself?"
"Afraid! Why should I be? We cannot find the buried treasure, therefore it is not likely anyone else could do so. And there is nothing else here to tempt anyone."
"Was there not?" Reginald reflected. "Was there not?" Yet she seemed so innocent and simple that he could not tell her his thoughts. He could not tell her, as he might have told a more worldly girl, that to many men there was a greater temptation in that graceful form and those hazel eyes and tawny golden hair than in all the dross beneath the surface of the earth. So he only said--
"But if you found the treasure? What would you do then?"
"We should go away, I suppose--though I should be sorry to leave this island. We should go into the world then--perhaps to Antigua or Trinidad." Reginald here politely concealed a smile, and she went on, "But I hope we shall never find it. My father and brother are used to the life they lead here; I do not think the outer world would suit them."
"But they are sailors and have seen it, you say?"
"They are sailors, but not such as you. They are simple, rough men, scarcely able to read or to write. That was, I think, why they--why my father--sent me to school at Antigua."
"But how do you live while they are away?" he asked her now.
"Very well. I have the hut, and there is always plenty of dried meat and fresh fruit. And sometimes I fish, or shoot a bird. There are plenty here of both kinds." Then she stopped and, looking at him, said, "Would you like to see our home? It is not far."
The girl's naïveté won on him so that there was but one reply possible--an immediate and fervent assent to this invitation; and a few moments later they were treading a path through the wood.