“I do not know how long I had slept when I became aware of a steady gaze fixed on my face. The man was looking down on me, and no living creature ever stood so still. There was imperious command in the unblinking eyes, and yet I saw a sort of profound entreaty also.
“It was plain that the visitant had business with me. I arose, and together we left the room, passed its neighbor, and entered a third, a barren little apartment through whose cracks the wind came mercilessly. I think it was I who had opened the doors. My companion did not seem to move. He was merely present all the time.
“ ‘It is here,’ he said, as I halted in the middle of the bare floor, ‘that more gold lies buried than is good for any man. You have but to dig, and it is yours. You can use it; I cannot. However, it must be applied only to purposes of highest beneficence. Not one penny may be evilly or selfishly spent. On this point you must keep faith and beware of any failing. Do you accept?’
“I answered, ‘Yes,’ and the visitant was gone, and I was shivering with cold. I groped my way back to my fire, bumping into obstructions I had not found in my journey away from it. I piled on wood with a generous hand, and the flames leaped high. I watched the unaccountable shadows dance on the whitewashed walls, and marked how firebeams flickered across the warpings of the boards in the floor. Then I dozed off.
“I do not know how long I had been asleep when I felt the presence of the visitant again. The still reproach of his fixed eyes was worse than wrath. ‘I need your help more than you can know,’ he said, ‘and you would fail me. The treasure is mine to give. I paid for it with the substance of my soul. I want you to have it. With it you can balance somewhat the burden of guilt I carry for its sake.’
“Again we made the journey to the spot where the treasure was buried, and this time he showed it to me. There were yellow coins, jeweled watches, women’s bracelets, diamond rings, and strings of pearls. It was just such a trove as I had dreamed of when as a boy I had planned to dig for Lafitte’s treasure, except [[189]]that the quantity of it was greater. With the admonition, ‘Do not force me to come again,’ my companion was gone, and once more I made my way back to the fire.
“This time I took up my saddle and blanket and went out to the company of my horse. The wind and the waves were wailing together, but I thought I saw a promise of light across the chilly bay, and never was the prospect of dawn more welcome. As I saddled up and rode off, the doleful boom of the muddy water at the foot of the bluff came to me like an echoed anguish.”
But Lafitte does not appear to every one who spends a night in the house, and any person seeking the treasure from purely selfish motives is likely to rue his pains. A story is told of an acquisitive and enterprising man who came hundreds of miles with the purpose of helping himself to the chance of finding pirate gold, but who abruptly changed his mind after spending a night in the house. As Lafitte steadily pursues his object of finding a fit recipient for his dangerous gift, never succeeding, his disappointment is sometimes terrible, so they say, and some simple folk believe that when there is a particularly dolorous moan in the wash of the waves, it is the despair of the pirate finding voice in the wail of the waters.