CHAPTER VII.
SOMETHING ABOUT THE HIDDEN TREASURE.
Miss Sarah Liverage had been three days at the Cliff House before the mystery of her coming appeared to promise a solution. The landlord was sure she had come for something, for all her speech and all her actions indicated this. She had not visited the shore for recreation, and was not idling away a vacation. One day she commenced a conversation with Mr. Bennington, and the next with Leopold; and, though she evidently desired to make some important revelation, or ask some startling question, she always failed to carry out her purpose. She was nervous and excitable; and on the second day of her stay at the hotel, the chambermaid discovered her in her room, on her knees before the fireplace, apparently investigating the course of the flue; but when the girl asked her what she was doing, she answered that she was looking for her shawl-pin, which she had dropped.
The weather was rather chilly, and the wind blew fresh and stormy on the bay, so that Leopold seldom went out in the new boat, but did a man's work about the hotel; for as the season advanced the "help" was reduced. Miss Liverage, for some reason, seemed to be very desirous of cultivating his acquaintance, and she talked with him much more than with his father. On the second day of her stay she offered him a dollar, when he brought her a pitcher of water to drink in the parlor, which the young man was too proud to accept. The guest talked to him for half an hour; and he noticed that she did not drink any of the water he had brought. On the strength of this and other similar incidents, Leopold declared that she was a very strange woman. She sent for him, or procured his attendance by less direct means, as though she had something to say; but she did not say it. She asked a multitude of questions in regard to some of the localities in the vicinity, but she did not connect her business at Rockhaven with any of them.
On the third day of her residence at the Cliff House a violent north-east storm commenced, and the guest could not go out of the house as she had been accustomed to do in the forenoon for a short time. From the cliff near the house Leopold had explained to her the geography of the vicinity; and when she inquired where the ledges were on which the Waldo had been lost, he indicated the direction in which they were situated, for the high land on the south shore of the river intercepted the view of them. Miss Liverage appeared to become more desperate in her purpose, whatever it was as the day passed away; and the storm seemed to increase her excitement. On the fourth day after her arrival, she vibrated between her chamber and the parlor all the forenoon, occasionally visiting the dining-room and the office. The landlord said she was "as uneasy as a fish out of water;" and he carried books and newspapers to her, but these did not seem to occupy her attention. She only glanced at them, and it was plain that her mind wandered when she attempted to read them. After dinner, on this eventful day her desperation appeared to culminate in a resolve to do something; and for the twentieth time since her arrival she sent for Leopold.
When he entered the parlor, where she was nervously walking across the floor, she closed the door after him, and looked out at the windows which opened on the piazza, apparently to assure herself that no one was within hearing distance of her. She labored under more than her usual excitement of manner, and the landlord's son was impressed with a belief that something was about to happen. Miss Liverage had evidently made up her mind to say something, and Leopold promptly made up his mind, also, to hear what it was.
"I didn't come down here for nothing," said she, and then paused to observe the effect of this startling revelation upon her auditor.
"I didn't suppose you did," replied Leopold, judging from the pause that he was expected to say something, though he was not very deeply impressed by the guest's announcement.
"Leopold, Harvey Barth said you were a very nice young man," she added.
"Then I suppose I am, for I think Mr. Barth was a man of good judgment," laughed Leopold.