The boy gulped.  Gavin bent his own head toward the cat and seemed about to resume his incantation.  With a galvanic jump, the youth made answer: 

“Came by the path.  Watched till the dawg run out in the road to bark at suthin’.  This man,” with a jerk of his head toward his captor, “this man went to the road after him.  I cut across the grass, yonder, and got in.  They come back.  I hid me in there.”

“H’m!  Why didn’t you come by way of the tunnel, like the other Caesars?”

“Pop tol me not to.  Sent me ahead.  Said mebbe they moughtn’t git in here if the doors was locked early.  Tol’ me to hide me in the house an’ let ’em in, late, ef they-all couldn’t git in no earlier, or ef they couldn’t cotch one of the two cusses outside the house.”

“Good strategy!” approved Brice.  “That explains why they haven’t rushed us, Standish.  They came here in force, and most likely (if they’ve gotten out of the enclosure, yet) they’ve surrounded the house, waiting for you or Hade to come in or go out.  If that doesn’t work, they plan to wait till you’re asleep, and then get in, by this gallant youngster’s help, and cut your throat at their leisure and loot the house and take a good leisurely hunt for the treasure.  It calls for more sense than I thought they had ....  How did they find the tunnel?” he continued, to the prisoner.

“They been a-huntin’ fer it, nigh onto one-half of a year,” sulkily returned the boy.  “Pop done found it, yest’dy.  Stepped into it, he did, a walkin’ past.”

“The rumor of that tunnel has been hereabout for over a century,” explained Brice, to the Standishes.  “Just as the treasure-rumors have.  I heard of it when I was a kid.  The Caesars must have heard it, a thousand times.  But, till this game started, there was no impetus to look for it, of course.  The tunnel is supposed to have been dug just after that Seminole warparty cut off the refugees in the path.  By the way, Miss Standish, I didn’t mention it while we were still there, but the mangrove-swamp is supposed to be haunted by the ghosts of those killed settlers.”

Brother and sister glanced at each other, almost in guilt, as it seemed to the observing Brice.  And Claire said, shortly: 

“I know.  Every one around here has heard it.  Some of the negroes and even some of the more ignorant crackers declare they have heard screams from the swamp on dark nights and that white figures have been seen flitting—­”

“So?” queried Brice.  “Back in the boat, you were starting to tell me how you sat on the veranda, one night, and heard a cry in the swamp and then saw a white figure emerge from the path.  Yes?  I have a notion that that white figure was responsible for the cry, and that your brother and Rodney Hade were responsible for both.  Wasn’t that a trick to scare off any chance onlookers, when some of the treasure was to be brought here?”

“Yes,” admitted Claire, shamefacedly, and she added:  “Milo hadn’t told me anything about it.  And Rodney thought I was at a dance at the Royal Palm Hotel, that evening.  I had expected to go, but I had a headache.  When the cry and the white form frightened me so, Milo had to tell me what they both meant.  That was how I found out, first, that they—­”