“Can’t build solid ef you don’t staht solid,” she heard the old coachman say.  She glided to the chimney-breast, searching it swiftly with her eyes and now with her hands.  Soilure and scars had kept the secret of the hidden niche all these months, and neither stain, scar, nor any sign left by Hilary or Flora betrayed it now.  Surely this was the very panel Flora had named.  Yet dumbly, rigidly it denied the truth, for Hilary, having reaped its spoil, had, to baffle his jailors, cunningly made it fast.  And time was flying!  Tremblingly the searcher glanced again to the door, to the screen, to the veranda windows—­though these Israel had rudely curtained—­and then tried another square, keenly harkening the while to all sounds and especially to the old negro’s incessant speech: 

“Now, Mr. Brick-mason, ef you’ll climb in hyuh I’ll step out whah you is and fetch a bucket o’ warteh.  Gal, move one side a step, will you?”

While several feet stirred lightly Anna persisted in her trembling quest—­not to find the treasure, dear Heaven, but only to find it gone.  Would that little be denied?  So ardent was the mute question that she seemed to have spoken it aloud, and in alarm looked once more at the windows, the door, the screen—­the screen!  A silence had settled there and as her eye fell on it the stooping mason came from behind it, glancing as furtively as she at windows and door and then exaltedly to her.  She stiffened for outcry and flight, but in the same instant he straightened up and she knew him; knew him as right here she had known him once before in that same disguise, which the sad fortunes of their cause had prevented his further use of till now.  He started forward, but with beseeching signs and whispers, blind to everything between them but love and faith, she ran to him.  He caught her to his heart and drew her behind the screen under the enraptured eyes of her paralyzed maid.  For one long breath of ecstasy the rest of the universe was nothing.  But then—­

“The treasure?” she gasped.  “The dagger?”

He showed the weapon in its precious scabbard and sought to lay it in her hands, but—­“Oh, why! why!” she demanded, though with a gaze that ravished his,—.  “Why are you not on your way—?”

“Am!” he softly laughed.  “Here, leave me the dirk, but take the sheath.  Everything’s there that we put there long ago, beloved, and also a cypher report of what I heard last night in the garden—­never mind what!—­take it, you will save Mobile!  Now both of you slip through this hole and down the ladder and quietly skedaddle—­quick—­come!”

“But the guards?”

“Just brass it out and walk by them.  Victorine’s waiting out behind with all her aunt’s things at a house that old Israel will tell you of—­listen!” From just outside the basement, near the cisterns, a single line of song rose drowsily and ceased: 

  “Heap mo’ dan worteh-million juice—­”