“Well,” he resumed, “one day, some seven years ago, in a little cave below the orange trees, grubbing about as I am fond of doing, I came upon a beautiful old box of beaten copper, sunk deep among the roots of a fig tree.  It was strong, but it seemed too dainty for a pirate—­some great lady’s jewel box more likely—­Calypso shall show it to us presently.  On opening it—­what do you think?  It spilled over with golden doubloons—­among which were submerged some fine jewels, such as this tie ring you see me wearing.  Actually, it was no great treasure, at a monetary calculation—­certainly no fortune—­but from our romantic point of view, as belonging to the race of Eternal Children, it was El Dorado, Aladdin’s lamp, the mines of Peru, the whole sunken Spanish Main, glimmering fifty fathoms deep in mother-of-pearl and the moon.  It was the very Secret Rose of Romance; and, also, mark you, it was some money—­O! perhaps, all told, it might be some five thousand guineas, or—­what would you say?—­twenty-five odd thousand dollars; Calypso knows better than I, and she, as I said, alone knows where it is now hid, and how much of it now remains.”

He paused to relight his cigar, while Calypso and I—­Well, he began again: 

“Now my daughter and I,” and he paused to look at her fondly, “though of the race of Eternal Children, are not without some of the innocent wisdom which Holy Writ countenances as the self-protection of the innocent—­Calypso, I may say, is particularly endowed with this quality, needing it as she does especially for the guardianship for her foolish talkative old father, who, by the way, is almost at the end of his tale.  So, when this old chest flashed its bewildering dazzle upon us, we, being poor folk, were not more dazzled than afraid.  For—­like the poor man in the fable—­such good fortune was all too likely to be our undoing, should it come to the ears of the great, or the indigent criminal.  The ‘great’ in our thought was, I am ashamed to say, the sacred British Treasury, by an ancient law of which, forty per cent. of all ‘treasure-trove’ belongs to His Majesty the King.  The ’indigent criminal’ was represented by—­well, our coloured (and not so very much coloured) neighbours.  Of course, we ought to have sent the whole treasure to your friend, John Saunders, of His Britannic Majesty’s Government at Nassau, but—­Well, we didn’t.  Some day, perhaps, you will put in a word for us with him, as you drink his old port, in the snuggery.  Meanwhile, we had an idea, Calypso and I—­”

He paused—­for Calypso had involuntarily made a gesture, as though pleading to be spared the whole revelation—­and then with a smile, continued: 

“We determined to hide away our little hoard where it would be safe from our neighbours, and dispose of it according to our needs with a certain tradesman in the town whom we thought we could trust—­a tradesman, who, by the way, quite naturally levies a little tax upon us for his security.  No blame to him!  I have lived far too long to be hard on human nature.”