“Have you seen any of this treasure?” interposed Brice.

“No,” she admitted.  “Once or twice, bags of it have been brought into the house, very late at night.  But Milo explained to me it had to be taken away again, right off, for fear of fire or thieves or—­”

“And you don’t know where it was taken to?”

“No.  Except that Rodney has been shipping it North.  But they promised me that as soon—­”

“I see!” he answered, as a stumble over a root cut short her words and made her cling to him more tightly.  “You are an ideal sister.  You’d be an ideal wife for a scoundrel.  You would be a godsend to any one with phoney stock to sell.  Your credulity is perfect.  And your feminine curiosity is under lots better control than most women’s.  I suppose they told you this so-called treasure is in the form of ingots and nuggets and pieces-of-eight and jewels-so-rich-and-rare, and all the rest of the bag of tricks borrowed from Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’?  They would!”

She showed her disrelish for his flippant tone, by removing her hand from his arm.  But at once the faint hiss of a snake as it glided into the swamp from somewhere just in front of them made her clutch his wet sleeve afresh.  His hints as to the nature of the treasure had roused her inquisitiveness to a keen point.  Yet, remembering what he had said about her praiseworthy dearth of feminine curiosity, she approached the subject in a roundabout way.

“If it isn’t gold bars and jewels and old Spanish coins, and so forth,” said she, seeking to copy his bantering tone, “then I suppose it is illicit whiskey?  It would be a sickening anticlimax to find they were liquor-smugglers.”

“No,” Brice reassured her, “neither Standish nor Hade is a bootlegger—­nor anything so petty.  That’s too small game for them.  Though, in some parts of southern Florida, bootleggers are so thick that they have to wear red buttons in their lapels, to keep from trying to sell liquor to each other.  No, the treasure is considerably bigger than booze or any other form of smuggling.  It—­Hello!” he broke off.  “There’s your lawn, right ahead of us.  I can see patches of starlight through that elaborate vine-screen draped so cleverly over the head of the path.  Now, listen, Miss Standish.  I am going to the house.  But first I am going to see you to the main road.  That road’s patroled, and it’s safe from the gentle Caesars.  I want you to go there and then make your way to the nearest neighbor’s.  If there is any mixup, we’ll want you as far out of it as possible.”

As he spoke, he held aside the curtain of vines, for her to step out onto the starlit lawn.  A salvo of barking sounded from the veranda, and Bobby Burns, who had been lying disconsolately on the steps, came bounding across the lawn, in rapture, at scent and step of the man he had chosen as his god.

“Good!” muttered Brice, stooping to pat the frantically delighted collie.  “If he was drowsing there, it’s a sign no intruders have tried to get into the house yet.  He’s been here a day.  And that’s long enough for a dog like Bobby to learn the step and the scent of the people who have a right here and to resent any one who doesn’t belong.  Now, what’s the shortest way to the main road?”