The three soldiers hugged one another with delight.
"We are rich!" cried Philip.
"Let's count our treasure," said Coleman. "The double-eagles first—fifty to a thousand."
Forgotten was the old man of the mountain, forgotten were their weariness and the lateness of the hour, as they eagerly fell a-counting.
They piled the shining yellow columns on the mantel-piece; and when that was full, without stopping to count the thousands, they began bunches of piles on the hard floor.
They could hardly believe that such a treasure had fallen to their possession.
In their greedy delight they utterly forgot the old flag of the thirty-five stars, and the total defeat of the Union armies, as they toiled and counted.
Philip was the first to yield to the demands of tired nature. With his hands full of gold, he sank down on his bunk and fell asleep. Lieutenant Coleman was the next; and as the cock began to crow at earliest dawn, Bromley bolted the door for the first time since the house had been built, and crept exhausted into his blankets.
The treasure was found, as shown by the diary, on Friday, April 14, in the year 1865, on the very night of the murder of the good President whom the three soldiers believed to be living somewhere, a monument of failure and incapacity.
The entry was in a few brief words, and by the Sunday which followed, Lieutenant Coleman would not have exchanged the four blank leaves of the diary for the whole treasure they had dug up. After the first excitement of their discovery they began to realize that the yellow stamped pieces were of no value except as a medium of exchange, and that, as there was nothing on the mountain for which to exchange them, they were of no value at all. If they had found a saucepan or a sack of coffee in the cask, they would have had some reason to rejoice.