Roy smiled quizzically, as he met David’s earnestly inquiring gaze:
“You’re not so skeptical, eh, Dave?” he said.
David smiled wryly, and shook his head. In his gentle, goggling eyes was reminiscence.
“It’s borne in on my consciousness,” Roy continued, rather pedantically, “that the clue isn’t here, and it’s not to be found by tedious, disgusting ransacking of scraps, like these we’ve been wasting our time on here, but, on the contrary, will be revealed to us in some much more curious manner. In fact, I feel that we shall succeed, but that our success will come in an apparently chance suggestion from some one of us, which will really be in the nature of an inspiration. You see, Dave,” he concluded, staring at the other intently, “the idea of the hiding-place is well compacted as a thought-form, for the old man was thinking of his treasure and its concealment hour after hour, day after day. The influence is here, ready to affect anyone sensitive enough to be susceptible to such vibration. For my part, I’m sure some one of us will presently become obsessed by some seemingly absurd idea—an idea, in all likelihood, quite irrational—that idea will lead us to victory, and to the Abernethey gold.”
Saxe laughed, a bit sourly. Roy’s psychic gasconading would have been more amusing with another theme. It seemed, in truth, rather heartless jesting, when a fortune was the issue. To suggest that wealth must await the vagaries of a thought-form’s impact on somebody’s consciousness, which wouldn’t know even what had hit it! Of all preposterous things! It was brutal, too.
David sprang to his feet, his big, brown eyes shining alertly through the eyeglasses.
“Praise be!” he cried. Instantly, thereafter, he proceeded to the execution of a clog-dance, which he performed with astonishing precision and swiftness, while Roy clapped the rhythm with foot and hands.
Saxe looked on in unconcealed disgust. At the conclusion of the pas seul, he lifted his voice in complaint:
“Well, of all the heartless, unsympathetic wretches! If it was your money, you might not feel so devilishly tickled.” He glared at the unabashed two accusingly.
David strode forward, and clapped his friend on the back.