I find myself diggin’ in first one outlandish place and then another.  And if I’m not diggin’ in my sleep, your father is, with jerks and starts and grunts enough to wake the dead.  I’m all unstrung.  So far as I can see the only thing we’re findin’ is nerves.  One thing I will say:  It was dull and lonesome before Mr. O’Neill came and I missed him when he went but dear knows, it was peaceful.  It’s been one thing right after the other.  Who upset Mr. Abbott in the river, I’d like to know, and almost hit him in the head with an oar?  Who kept Mr. Craig so upset that he threw his brandy bottle at your father most every morning?  Who sang the roan cow into kickin’ at the milk?  Who—­”

“Sh!” said Hetty.

It seemed that Mr. O’Neill at that minute was not digging up the lilac bush.  There was a sound of hurried footsteps in the room beyond and he came in with a piece of letter paper in his hand.

“Look, Hannah,” he cried.  “Look!  I found it among Mr. Craig’s papers.  It’s a rude chart of the farm, picked out here and there in dots.”

Hannah wiped her arms and put on her glasses.  The paper filled her with excitement.

“Sakes alive, Mr. O’Neill,” she exclaimed, “what will you do now?”

“Do?” said Kenny wildly.  “Do?  There’s only one thing to do, of course.  Hughie and I will dig up the dots.  I wish to Heaven I could find a Leprechaun somewhere under a thorn-bush.”

“What’s a Leper John?” demanded Hannah.

“A fairy shoemaker,” explained Kenny absently, “in a red coat and he wears buckled shoes and knee-breeches and a hat with a peak and always he’s mendin’ a shoe that he doesn’t finish, find him and never once let him trick you into lookin’ away and he’ll tell you where treasure is hidden, always.”

Hannah blinked.

“What ye need most to my mind, Mr. O’Neill,” she said earnestly, “is a regiment of grave-diggers and stone-cutters to help you and Hughie get the thing done.”

Night came upon them with Hughie digging up a dot beside the well and Kenny again in the orchard.  Everything led back somehow to the orchard, his memory, the chart, even his own conviction.

That night in a dream Kenny distinctly saw the weary little doctor with a bag of mystery in his hand and a spade over his shoulder walking down the orchard hill.

He awoke at dawn with a shiver of excitement.  The doctor!  What could be more reasonable?  Adam had known him for a lifetime.  Whom else would he trust?  The thought nerved him to heroics.