Philip’s heart was pumping painfully as he came, dazed and staring, to the place where the apparition had vanished.  It was a giant beech tree, all of two hundred and fifty years old, and around its base ran a broken wooden bench, where pretty girls of Fairfield had listened to their sweethearts, where children destined to be generals and judges had played with their black mammies, where gray-haired judges and generals had come back to think over the fights that were fought out.  There were letters carved into the strong bark, the branches swung down whisperingly, the green tent of the forest seemed filled with the memory of those who had camped there and gone on.  Philip’s feet stumbled over the roots as he circled the veteran; he peered this way and that, but the woodland was hushed and empty; the birds whistled above, the grasses rustled below, unconscious, casual, as if they knew nothing of a child-soul that had wandered back on Christmas day with a Christmas message, perhaps, of good-will to its own.

As he stood on the farther side of the tree where the little ghost had faded from him, at his feet lay, open and conspicuous, a fresh, deep hole.  He looked down absent-mindedly.  Some animal—­a dog, a rabbit—­had scratched far into the earth.  A bar of sunlight struck a golden arm through the branches above, and as he gazed at the upturned, brown dirt the rays that were its fingers reached into the hollow and touched a square corner, a rusty edge of tin.  In a second the young fellow was down on his knees digging as if for his life, and in less than five minutes he had loosened the earth which had guarded it so many years, and staggering with it to his feet had lifted to the bench a heavy tin box.  In its lock was the key, and dangling from it a long bit of no-colored silk, that yet, as he untwisted it, showed a scarlet thread in the crease.  He opened the box with the little key; it turned scrapingly, and the ribbon crumbled in his fingers, its long duty done.  Then, as he tilted the heavy weight, the double eagles, packed closely, slipped against each other with a soft clink of sliding metal.  The young man stared at the mass of gold pieces as if he could not trust his eyesight; he half thought even then that he dreamed it.  With a quick memory of the mortgage he began to count.  It was all there—­ten thousand dollars in gold!  He lifted his head and gazed at the quiet woodland, the open shadow-work of the bare branches, the fields beyond lying in the calm sunlit rest of a Southern winter.  Then he put his hand deep into the gold pieces, and drew a long breath.  It was impossible to believe, but it was true.  The lost treasure was found.  It meant to him Shelby and home; as he realized what it meant his heart felt as if it would break with the joy of it.  He would give her this for his Christmas gift, this legacy of his people and hers, and then he would give her himself.  It was all easy now—­life seemed not to hold a difficulty.  And the two would keep tenderly,