“If I could have my way with them two fellers they’d never trouble nobody else,” exclaimed Godfrey, shaking his fist at the departing boat.  “Whar be I goin’ to hide now, I’d like to know?”

“Stay here,” replied Dan, “an’ if they come back to pester you, growl ’em off ’n the island like you done this time.”

“An’ git a bullet into me fur my pains?” returned his father.  “No, sar.  Don’ll be up here agin in the mornin’, sartin, an’ he’ll have his rifle with him, too; but I won’t be here to stand afore it, kase I’ve seed him shoot too ofter.  He kin jest beat the hind sights off’n you, any day in the week.”

“Whoop!” cried Dan, jumping up and knocking his heels together.

“I don’t see what bring them two oneasy chaps up here, nohow,” said Godfrey, taking no notice of the boy’s threatening attitude.  “I never knowed them or anybody else to come up the bayou in a small boat afore, ‘ceptin’ when that bar was killed here.  That was an amazin’ smart trick of mine, Dannie.  Howsomever, we hain’t got no more time to talk.  I’m goin’ to give you five dollars, Dannie, an’ I want you to go to the landin’ an’ spend it fur me.  Get me a pair of shoes—­number ‘levens, you know—­an’ two pair stockin’s, an’ spend the heft of the rest fur tobacker.  Then when it comes dark, I want you to get that canoe agin, an’ bring it up here with the things you buy at the store.”

“How am I goin’ to git the canoe?”

“Take it an’ welcome, like I did.”

Dan shrugged his shoulders, and his father, believing from the expression on his face that he was about to refuse to undertake the task, made haste to add:—­

“An’ when you come, Dannie, I’ll tell you how we’re goin’ to work it to git them hundred and fifty dollars that Dave’s goin’ to ’arn by trappin’ them birds fur that feller up North.  I have a right to it, kase I’m his pap:  an’ when I get it, I’ll give you half—­that is, if you do right by me while I’m hidin’ here.  I’ll give you half that bar’l, too, when we find it.  Then you kin have your circus hoss an’ all your other nice things, can’t you?” added Godfrey, playfully poking his son in the ribs.

Dan’s face relaxed a little, but his father’s affected enthusiasm was not as contagious now as it was when the subject of the buried treasure was first brought up for discussion.  Godfrey had no intention of renewing his efforts to find the barrel—­he could not have been hired to go into that potato-patch after what had happened there—­but it was well enough, he thought, to hold it up to Dan as an inducement.  Besides, if he could get the boy interested in the matter again, and induce him to prosecute the search, and Dan should, by any accident, stumble upon the barrel, so much the better for himself.  The great desire of his life would be attained.  He would be rich, and that, too, without work.

“Why can’t you steal the canoe yourself?” asked Dan.

“Kase I’ve got to pack up an’ get ready to leave here; that’s why.  It’ll take me from now till the time you come back to get all my traps together.”