“There must be some mistake.  My father had spoken of a ’stone shaped like a man’s head,’ but said nothing of a rhododendron tree, and indeed this particular tree was in nowise different from its companions.  I looked around; took a few steps to the right, then to the left; went round the tree; walked back a few paces; returned to the tree to see if it concealed anything; then sought the track to begin my measurement afresh.

“I was just starting again in a very discomposed mood, when a thought struck me.  I had been behaving like a fool.  The parchment said ‘at a right angle to the left-hand edge of the track.’  I had started from my left hand, but I was descending the mountain, whereas the directions of course supposed the explorer to be ascending.  Almost ready to laugh at my stupidity, I tried again.

“Facing round, I got the needle at an angle of ninety degrees, and once more began counting.  My heart was beginning to beat quickly by this time, and I felt myself trembling with excitement.  The course was now more easily followed.  True, the growth was as thick as ever, but no rhododendrons blocked my passage.  Beating down the creepers that swung across my face, twined around my legs, and caught at my cap, I measured thirty-two paces as nearly as I could, and then stopped.

“Before me was a patch of velvet grass, some twelve feet square and bare of the undergrowth that crowded elsewhere; but not a trace of a stone.  I looked right and left, crossed the tiny lawn, peered all about, but still saw nothing at all resembling what I sought.

“As it began to dawn on me that all my hopes had been duped, my journey vain, and my father’s words an empty cheat, a sickening despair got hold of me.  My knees shook together, and big drops of sweat gathered on my forehead.  I roused myself and searched again; again I was baffled.  Distractedly I beat the bushes round and round the tiny lawn, then flung myself down on the turf and gave way to my despair.  To this, then, it had all come; this was the end for which I had abandoned my wife and child; this the treasure that had dangled so long before my eyes.  Fool that I had been!  I cursed my madness and the hour when I was born; never before had I heartily despised myself, never until now did I know how the lust for this treasure had eaten into my soul.  The secret, if secret indeed there were, and all were not a lie, was in the keeping of the silent Peak.

“I almost wept with wrath.  I tore the turf in my frenzy, and felt as one who would fain curse God and die.  But after a while my passion spent itself.  I sat up and reflected that after all my first direction might have been the right one; at any rate, I would try it again and explore it thoroughly.  The instructions were precise, and had been confirmed in the matter of the tree.  Evidently the person that wrote them had been upon the Peak, and what, if they were lies, was to be gained by the cheat?