“The hul on it?”

“Every cent.  I’m Dave’s pap, an’ the law gives me the right to his ‘arnin’s, an’ yours, too, until you’s both twenty-one years ole.  Now, Dannie, I’ve done a power of hard thinkin’ since I’ve been here on this island, an’ I’ve got some idees in my head that will make you look wild when you hear ’em.  I didn’t know jest how to carry ’em out afore, but I do now.  These yere hundred an’ fifty dollars will keep us movin’ till we kin find them eighty thousand.”

“Be you goin’ to look fur them agin, pap?”

“No, I hain’t, but you be.”

“Not much, I ain’t,” replied Dan, emphatically.

“Who’s to do it, then?” demanded his father.  “I can’t, kase I’m afeared to go into the settlement even at night.  You hain’t goin’ to give up the money, be you?  Then what’ll become of your circus-hoss, an’ your painted boats, an’ your fine guns what break in two in the middle?”

“I don’t keer,” answered Dan, doggedly.  “I wouldn’t go into that tater-patch alone, arter dark; if I knowed it was chuck full of yaller gold an’ silver pieces.”

The savage scowl that settled on Godfrey’s face, as he listened to these words, brought Dan to his feet again in great haste.  The man was fully as angry as he looked, and it is possible he might have said or done something not altogether to Dan’s liking, had it not been for an unlooked-for interruption that occurred just then.  Godfrey had raised his hand in the air to give emphasis to some remark he was about to make, when he was checked by a slight splashing in the water, accompanied by the measured clatter of oars, as they were moved back and forth in the row-locks.  This was followed by a clear, ringing laugh, which Godfrey and his son could have recognized anywhere, and a cheery voice said:—­

“I’m getting tired.  It is time for me to stop and rest when I begin to catch crabs.”

There was a boat in the bayou, and Don and Bert Gordon were in it.  They were so close at hand, too, that flight was impossible.

“I don’t think there’s much difference between riding on horseback and rowing in a boat, as far as the work is concerned,” said the same voice.  “I’ve done about all I can do to-day.  There don’t seem to be any ducks in the bayou; so we’ll stop here and take a breathing spell before we go back.”

“Is thar any place in the wide world a feller could crawl into without bein’ pestered by them two oneasy chaps?” whispered Dan, jumping up from his block of wood and looking all around, as if he were seeking a way of escape.

“Not a word out of you,” replied Godfrey, shaking his fist at his son.

Following Godfrey’s example, Dan threw himself behind one of the piles of cane, and the two held their breath and listened.

CHAPTER VII.

What happened there.

“You’re not going to get out, are you, Don?” asked Bert, and as he was not more than four or five rods away, every word he uttered was distinctly heard by the two listeners in the cane.