“And indeed that is a charge I’ll not allow—­that I am so little of a man as to let my courting be done for me.  No, no, it was my love compelling you that made you speak the words you did—­the love of a selfish man who should have thought only of shielding you from the hardships of such a wandering, homeless life as mine.”

“Well, Heaven reward you for your selfishness,” I said earnestly.  “I am thankful you were not so noble as to let me throw myself at your head in vain.  I have been doing it for ever so long, in fact, but it is such a thick Scotch head that I dare say I made no impression.”

“Sweet imp!  You’ll pay for that—­oh, Virginia, if I had only something to offer you!”

“You can offer me something that I want very much, if you will, and at no cost but to your strong right arm.”

“It is an arm which is at your service for life—­but what am I to do with it now?  And indeed I think it is very well employed at this moment.”

“But it must be employed much more strenuously,” I remarked, moving a little away, “if you are to get me what I want.  Before you came, I was meditating possible ways of getting it for myself.  I wanted it for a melancholy relic—­a sort of mausoleum in which all my hopes were buried.  Now its purpose is quite different; it is to be my bride’s chest and hold the dowry which I shall bring to one Dugald Shaw.”

“You mean the chest—­the chest that held the Spanish doubloons—­that lies under the sand in the sloop?”

“Exactly.  And now I shall know whether you are the true prince or not, because he always succeeds in the tasks he undertakes to win the princess.”

It was low tide, such a tide as had all but lured me to my death in the cave.  One could go and come from the beach along the rocks, without climbing the steep path up the cliff.  It was not long before Dugald was back again with spade and pick.  He tore off the shrunken, sun-dried boards from the cabin roof, and fell to work.

It was not, after all, a labor of Hercules.  The cabin was small and the chest large.  I watched with the pride of proprietorship the swift ease with which the steel-sinewed arms of the Scot made the caked sand fly.  Then the spade struck something which sent back a dull metallic sound through the muffling sand.

I gave a little shriek of excitement.  Hardly could I have been more thrilled if I had believed the chest still to contain the treasure of which it had been ravished.  It was filled to its brass-bound lid with romance, if not with gold.

A little more and it lay clear to our view, a convex surface of dark smoky brown, crossed by three massive strips of tarnished brass.  Dugald dug down until the chest stood free to half its height; then by its handles—­I recognized the “great hand-wrought loops of metal,” of the diary—­we dragged it from its bed, and drew it forth into the cockpit.