But ere he slept, and when a deep sense of fatigue was stealing over him, he rose once more, and, kneeling down by the spot he had selected, he prayed long that, whatever the morrow might bring forth, at least one thing might be granted. He prayed that all the bloodshed, and the cruelty that that treasure had been the cause of for more than two centuries, had ended at last, never more to be renewed--he prayed that, henceforth, it might bring only happiness and peace in its train.
"For her, for her," he whispered. "For her and for me."
And, feeling sure that his prayer was heard and would be granted, he laid himself down again and soon was sleeping peacefully.
CHAPTER XL.
THE SEARCH.
As the dawn came, and a cool wind blew over the water and brushed his cheek, he arose from a night of refreshing slumber--the first for two days--and took his way back to the cutter. Then, reaching her, he soon unmoored, made the boat fast astern, and, getting down the river, sailed round the island to the spot where the Keys were.
It took him an hour to fetch the beach in two tacks, and then he saw that, early as he was, Barbara was there before him, and that she was seated on the shore, the dog at her feet and a basket by her side.
This morning her eyes were no longer red--she had done with weeping for her vile brother, he thought--and her colour, always beautiful, except since the events of the last few days had driven it all away, had now come back to her. She, too, he knew, had slept peacefully at last, and in that peaceful rest all her loveliness had returned.
"Now, Barbara," he said, after they had exchanged their morning greetings, he from the boat, and she from the shore, "we'll call the boat away, and off we go to your inheritance. In a few hours you will, I trust, be put in possession of it." Saying which, he anchored the cutter, got into the boat and cast her off, and so rowed ashore for Barbara. He had found out that the capabilities of this boat--crazy as it seemed--were quite equal to carrying them, and the implements for digging, out to the Key a hundred yards off, and he also knew that, by leaving Barbara on the middle Key when they had found the treasure, he could convey each of the boxes, or coffers, back to the island one by one. Then, as to the final removal of them and their owner from Coffin Island--well, that would all be arranged for later.
A few minutes only and they stepped out upon the soft wet sand of the middle Key--they stood upon the place that, perhaps, no other foot had trodden since Nicholas left it more than two hundred years ago. There was nothing to bring anyone to that particular atom of an island among all the thousands upon thousands of islands with which the marine surface of the world is dotted, not even a search for the turtles and the eggs they laid. For, in these regions, those creatures are so common that nobody desiring to procure one would have even troubled to visit the middle Key while the outer ones were easier of access.