Speculations and conjectures were rife among the neighbors as to the "best manner of investing their friend Warlow's fortune;" and, in fact, it became impossible for any member of the colonel's family to meet an acquaintance without being informed of some great opening for a judicious investment, that was only waiting capital and enterprise to develop the fact that there was "millions in it."
As Clifford paused one day to discuss the state of the weather in a neighborly way with a male member of this well-meaning but misguided class, he learned that all the vast tract of vacant land to the north, which still belonged to the government, had been condemned as being, "unfit for agricultural purposes," and would be "offered" at public sale the following August at the local land-office.
When young Warlow parted with his informant the matter was dismissed; but whenever he glanced away to the north or east at the billowy hills and level, rich dales, he would begin planning how he could secure a tract of the land before it passed into the hands of relentless speculators; and one day he actually rode out over the fertile, picturesque country for miles, and with a blush found himself dreaming how that long, narrow valley should be sown to grain, and the galloping hills, clothed with rich grasses, could provide pasturage for his vast, imaginary flocks and herds.
Alas, that the lack of a few handfuls of "filthy lucre" only, stood between himself and the ownership of the broad acres on every hand! With a dreary sigh he realized, for the first time in his life, how bitter is the lot of the poor but ambitious man, who sees the avenues to wealth barred by his lack of capital.
As he stood on the spot where his father had lost his fortune so many years before, Clifford thought how many hundred thousand acres of that rolling, fertile country the lost wealth represented; and while his horse grazed quietly near, the youth threw himself down in the cool shadow of the ruined wall, dreaming and planning how he might recover the vast wealth that he had long suspected was buried here near the scene of the tragedy.
But when he calmly began to analyze the evidence on which his suspicions were based, he was disappointed to see how visionary it all seemed in the clear light of reason. But it was too dear and cherished a theory to be relinquished without a mental struggle; so again he began to persuade himself that those scheming white men, of whom young Estill had spoken—those inhuman villains—might have secreted the gold from the drunken Indians, and it might have been that the blood-stained, avaricious leaders had died a violent death in those turbulent days, and the great wealth was still sleeping, undisturbed, all these years, while his father was suffering under the heavy load of poverty and fallen fortune. As Clifford still mused, there flashed across his mind the lines of Rokeby:—
"Then dig and tomb your precious heap,
And bid the dead your treasure keep."
Springing to his feet, young Warlow cried aloud in his excitement:—
"Ah! it is all clear now—the blood on the grass and the newly made graves, of which Uncle Roger spoke! Yes, yes—they buried the dead and the gold in the same grave, and then decoyed the savages away! It may be that those bright doubloons, the red gold of the Walravens and my father, are buried but a few steps from where I stand."
Flinging aside doubt and uncertainty, he hurried down the hill to the spot where his father had said the treasure-laden vehicle had stood on that fatal night, and long and eagerly young Warlow searched for a trace of the graves. But it was all in vain; for the vast tide of travel that had flowed for a quarter of a century over the spot had not only obliterated all trace of those lowly mounds, but had also worn the mellow soil into deep gullies, down the sloping sides of which the knotted buffalo-grass crept like webs of pale-green lace.