“No, I didn’t! but I thought you did.”
“That was only to stir you up. I anticipated even more adverse conditions. It’s amazingly easier than I dared to hope.” 111
“Thunder! man! we can’t dig six feet deep over all of forty acres. We shall have the whole of Annapolis over to help us before we’ve done a square of forty feet.”
“You’re too liberal!” laughed Macloud. “Twenty feet would be ample.” Then he sobered. “The instructions say: seven hundred and fifty feet back, from the extreme tip of Greenberry Point, is the quadrangle of trees. That was in 1720, one hundred and ninety years ago. They must have been of good size then—hence, they would be of the greater size, now, or else have disappeared entirely. There isn’t a single tree which could correspond with Parmenter’s, closer than four hundred yards, and, as the point would have been receding rather than gaining, we can assume, with tolerable certainty, that the beeches have vanished—either from decay or from wind storms, which must be very severe over in this exposed land. Hence, must not our first quest be for some trace of the trees?”
“That sounds reasonable,” said Croyden, “and, if the Point has receded, which is altogether likely, then we are pretty near the place.”
“Yes!—if the Point has simply receded, but if it has shifted laterally, as well, the problem is not so simple.”
“Let us go out to the Point, and look at the ruins of the light-house. If we can get near enough to ascertain when it was built, it may help 112 us. Evidently there was none erected here, in Parmenter’s time, else he would not have chosen this place to hide his treasure.”
But the light-house was a barren yield. It was a crumbling mass of ruins, lying out in water, possibly fifty feet—the real house was a bug-light farther out in the Bay.
“Well, there’s no one to see us, so why shouldn’t we make a search for the trees?” said Croyden.
“Hold my horse!” said Macloud, dismounting.