“Well, he wanted to know one or two rather queer things about my family history—things I’d never heard nothing about. My father always did used to say that we were entitled to a big fortune, and he’d heard it from his father. Only that fortune ain’t come, and I don’t suppose it ever will. But both you gentlemen coming to me and asking the same questions has aroused my curiosity.”
“Ah!” I said. “Fortunes that are talked of in families are usually phantom ones. Why, there’s scarcely a family in England who don’t believe that they’ve been done out of their rightful inheritance.”
“I know that, sir. I could name twenty people in Rockingham who believe themselves the rightful heirs to property. That’s why I never believed the story about our fortune. My poor old father had to go on the parish before he died—a shilling a week and two loaves. So the idea of the fortune didn’t benefit him much.”
“But what was the story which your father told you?” I inquired.
“Oh, it was quite a romance. Half the people in Rockingham know about it, because when the old man used to get a drop o’ beer he always boasted of the great wealth that would be his some day.”
“But what was the story? Tell it to me as nearly as you can remember it.”
“Well, he used to say that long ago—hundreds of years, I think—the Knuttons were rich, but one son turned an adventurer, and accumulated a big treasure of gold and silver. This he hid away very carefully, because in those times there was no banks and places like there is now; but he left the secret in the hands of the head of the family, to be handed down for a certain number of years.”
“Then has it come down to you?” I asked quickly.
“No, sir, I only wish it had,” he laughed. Although a hard drinker, as I could tell from his puffed cheeks and unsteady hand, I was fortunate in finding him on that occasion quite sober.
“Perhaps the term of years ended and the fortune was realized,” I suggested, for to me it seemed more than probable that the secret of the hiding-place had been discovered long ago.