CHAPTER XIX
Bill Returns The Call
They weighed the pros and cons of Bee’s theory for the better part of an hour. Hal advanced all the arguments he could think of against it, but Jack sided with Bee almost from the first. “I don’t say you’re right, Bee,” he stated, “but I do think it’s a pretty good theory. And as we haven’t anything better to go by we might as well grab the theory. If that tree was there when Old Verny lived here it’s fair to suppose that it was near the cabin; perhaps right alongside of it. And maybe when he buried his chest of treasure he buried it under the tree. I guess we’d all be mightily surprised if we found it there, though!”
“It’s somewhere near the tree, anyway,” declared Bee with enthusiastic conviction.
“Then,” asked Hal, “what about your theory that the cabin stood inside of the triangle you figured out?”
“Well, the tree is only about twenty feet out of the triangle, and if the cabin stood to the left of the tree it would be practically inside it, you see. I wonder, now, which side of the cabin Old Verny would have planted a tree. That would have been on the west side.”
“He’d have planted it on the south or east side, I would think,” said Jack. “But maybe he didn’t know much about such things. Then, too, the tree may have sprung up from a seed dropped by accident.”
“I guess,” decided Bee, “we’d better assume that the tree was in front of the cabin, perhaps near the door. That would be the south side, where it would be sheltered pretty well from winds and would get lots of sunlight.” He looked down the slope and examined the ground. “It isn’t very steep right there, either.”
“It’s pretty near high-water, though,” Hal objected. “In winter a storm would drive the waves almost into the cabin, wouldn’t they, Jack?”
“N-no, I don’t believe the water ever gets up that high because, you see, Toller’s Rock jutting out there like that is a good deal of a protection. Still, it seems to me more likely that the cabin stood higher up.”