“I have told you why I didn’t search the ship,” responded Renshaw, with a slight bitterness.  “But it seems I could only avoid being a great rascal by becoming a great fool.”

“You never intended to be a rascal,” said Rosey, earnestly, “and you couldn’t be a fool, except in heeding what a silly girl says.  I only meant if you had taken me into your confidence it would have been better.”

“Might I not say the same to you regarding your friend, the old Frenchman?” returned Renshaw.  “What if I were to confess to you that I lately suspected him of knowing the secret, and of trying to gain your assistance?”

Instead of indignantly repudiating the suggestion, to the young man’s great discomfiture, Rosey only knit her pretty brows, and remained for some moments silent.  Presently she asked timidly: 

“Do you think it wrong to tell another person’s secret for their own good?”

“No,” said Renshaw, promptly.

“Then I’ll tell you Monsieur de Ferrieres’!  But only because I believe from what you have just said that he will turn out to have some right to the treasure.”

Then with kindling eyes, and a voice eloquent with sympathy, Rosey told the story of her accidental discovery of De Ferrieres’ miserable existence in the loft.  Clothing it with the unconscious poetry of her fresh, young imagination, she lightly passed over his antique gallantry and grotesque weakness, exalting only his lonely sufferings and mysterious wrongs.  Renshaw listened, lost between shame for his late suspicions and admiration for her thoughtful delicacy, until she began to speak of De Ferrieres’ strange allusions to the foreign papers in his portmanteau.  “I think some were law papers, and I am almost certain I saw the word Callao printed on one of them.”

“It may be so,” said Renshaw, thoughtfully.  “The old Frenchman has always passed for a harmless, wandering eccentric.  I hardly think public curiosity has ever even sought to know his name, much less his history.  But had we not better first try to find if there is any property before we examine his claims to it?”

“As you please,” said Rosey, with a slight pout; “but you will find it much easier to discover him than his treasure.  It’s always easier to find the thing you’re not looking for.”

“Until you want it,” said Renshaw, with sudden gravity.

“How pretty it looks over there,” said Rosey, turning her conscious eyes to the opposite mountain.

“Very.”

They had reached the top of the hill, and in the near distance the chimney of Madrono Cottage was even now visible.  At the expected sight they unconsciously stopped—­unconsciously disappointed.  Rosey broke the embarrassing silence.

“There’s another way home, but it’s a roundabout way,” she said timidly.

“Let us take it,” said Renshaw.

She hesitated.  “The boat goes at four, and we must return to-night.”