Bewilderment, shot with a gleam of half-incredulous understanding, seemed to transfix him.  We stood a long moment, our eyes challenging each other, exchanging their countersign of faith and steadfastness.  Then slowly he held out his hand.  I laid mine in it—­we stood hand in hand, comrades at last.  Without more words he turned away and strode over to the council of three.

I now became aware of Cuthbert Vane, whom perplexity had carried far beyond the bounds of speech and imprisoned in a sort of torpor.  He was showing faint symptoms of revival, and had got as far as “I say—?” uttered in the tone of one who finds himself moving about in worlds not realized, when the near-by group dissolved and moved rapidly toward us.  Miss Browne, exultant, beaming, was in the van.  She set her substantial feet down like a charger pawing the earth.  You might almost have said that Violet pranced.  Aunt Jane was round-eyed and twittering.  Mr. Tubbs wore a look of suppressed astonishment, almost of perturbation. What’s his game? was the question in the sophisticated eye of Mr. Tubbs.  But the Scotchman had when he chose a perfect poker face.  The great game of bluff would have suited him to a nicety.  Mr. Tubbs interrogated that inexpressive countenance in vain.

Miss Browne advanced on Cuthbert Vane and seized both his hands in an ardent clasp.

“Mr. Vane,” she said with solemnity, “I thank you—­in the name of this expedition I thank you—­for the influence you have exerted upon your friend!”

And this seemed to be to the noble youth the most stunning of all the shocks of that eventful morning.

Now came the matter of drawing up the new agreement.  It was a canny Scot indeed who, acting on the hint I had just given him, finally settled its terms.  In the first place, the previous agreement was declared null and void.  In the second, Mr. Tubbs was to have his fourth only if the treasure were discovered through his direct agency.  And it was under this condition and no other that Dugald Shaw bound himself to relinquish his original claim.  Virginia Harding signed a new renunciatory clause, but it bore only on treasure discovered by Mr. Tubbs.  Indeed, the entire contract was of force only if Mr. Tubbs fulfilled his part of it, and fell to pieces if he did not.  Which was exactly what I wanted.

Miss Browne and Mr. Tubbs demurred a little at the wording on which Mr. Shaw insisted, but Mr. Tubbs’s confidence in the infallibility of the tombstone was so great that no real objection was interposed.  No difficulty was made of the absence of Captain Magnus, as his interests were unaffected by the change.  Space was left for his signature.  Mine came last of all, as that of a mere interloper and hanger-on.  I added it and handed the paper demurely across to Violet, who consigned it to an apparently bottomless pocket.  Copies were to be made after lunch.