When I reached my lodging at last in the early morning following that night of wonders, my eyes and heart were not so dazed with that vision in the cave that I did not vividly recall one important detail of the strange picture—­those streams of gold that had suddenly poured out of the mouth and hands of the lovely apparition.

Need I say that over and over again the picture kept coming before me?—­haunting me like that princess from my childhood’s fairy-book, from whose mouth, as she spoke, poured all manner of precious stones.  We all remember that—­and had I not seen the very thing itself with my own grown-up eyes?  No wonder it all seemed like a dream, when, late next forenoon, I woke from a deep sleep that had been long in overtaking me.  Yet, there immediately in my mind’s eye, without any shadow of doubt, was the beautiful picture once more, vivid and exact in every detail.  Without doubting the evidence of my senses, I was forced to believe that, by the oddest piece of luck, I had stumbled upon the hiding-place of that hoard of doubloons, on which my fair unknown drew from time to time as she would out of a bank.

But who was she?—­and where was her home?  There had seemed no sign of habitation near the wild place where I had come upon her, though, of course, a solitary house might easily have escaped my notice hidden among all that foliage, particularly at nightfall.

To be sure, I had but to enquire of the storekeeper to learn all I wanted; but I was averse from betraying my interest to him or to any one in the settlement—­for, after all, it was my own affair, and hers.  So I determined to pursue my policy of watching and waiting, letting a day or two elapse before I again went out wandering with my gun.

Probably she would be making another trip to the settlement, before long.  Doubtless, it was for that purpose that she was visiting her very original safety-deposit vault when I had come so embarrassingly upon her.

However, inaction, in the circumstances, was difficult, and when two days had gone without bringing any sign of her, I determined to follow the trail of my last expedition, and find out whether that strip of rocky coast, with its hidden cavern, actually did stand firm somewhere on the solid earth, or was merely a phantom coast fronting

    “The foam of perilous seas in faery-land forlorn.”

As a matter of fact, I did find it, after having lost my way in the thick brush several times before doing so.  I reckoned, when at last I emerged upon it, that it was a distance of some six or seven miles from the settlement, though, owing to my ignorance of the way, it had taken me a whole morning to cover it.  Did she have to thread these thorny thickets every time she came to the little town?  No; doubtless she was acquainted with some easier and shorter path.

However, here was the cliff-bastioned sea-front, and down there was the boulder on which she had stood like a statue in the moonlight.  I craned my neck over the edge of the cliffs to catch sight of the entrance to her cave—­but in vain.  Nor was there apparent any way of reaching it from above.  Evidently it was only approachable from the sea.