“Wh-who were they?” asked the Lieutenant, round-eyed.
“Who were they? Who were they?” the Head Captain repeated scornfully. “The idea! I guess you’d find out who they were if they caught you once!”
The Lieutenant shot a sly glance at the Vicar. Did she know? You never could tell, she pretended so. She shivered at the Head Captain’s implication.
“Yes, sirree, I guess you’d find out then,” she assured him.
Suddenly the Head Captain’s face fell. “The treasure!” he gasped. “It’s gone!”
In dismay they turned out their pockets. All those vessels of gold and vessels of silver were lost—lost in that last mad rush. All but the shallow, gold-colored saucer in the Vicar’s hand. They looked at it enviously, but honor kept them silent. To the Vicar belonged the spoils.
“I don’t see what good they were, anyhow,” began the Lieutenant morosely.
“’Good’?” mimicked the Head Captain, enraged. “’Good’? Why, didn’t we steal ’em?”
Slowly they took off their uniforms and hid them under the back piazza. Slowly the occasion faded into the light of common day; objects lost their mystery, the barn and the tool-house imperceptibly divested themselves of all glamour. It was only the back yard.
The Head Captain and the Lieutenant threw themselves down under the pear tree again and fell into a doze. The Vicar, grasping her treasure, stumbled up the back stairs and took an informal nap on the landing. It must have been at this time that the gold-colored saucer slipped from her hand, for when she woke on the sofa in the upper hall, it was nowhere about.