He was feeling jumpy about the treasure, and dreaming of it all night long in a way that did not make the waking fears more comfortable.  A whole company of sappers bad been sent for; and because of the need of secrecy for the present, a special appropriation had had to be made to cover the cost of lumber for the tunnel that Dick began, and that the sappers finished.  They had dug right up to the pipal trees, and half-killed them by tunneling under their roots along one side; but without discovering anything so far, except a few old coins. (The very ancient golden mohur in the glass case marked “Sialpore” in the Allahabad Museum is one of them.) Now they were going to tunnel down the other side and kill the ancient trees completely.

Being a man of a certain courage, Samson had it in mind—­perhaps—­ to send the map to an expert for an opinion on it.  Only, he hated experts; they were so bent always on establishing their own pet theory.  And it was late—­a little late for expert opinions on the map.  The wisest way was to keep silent and continue digging, even if the operation did kill ancient landmarks that one could see—­from across the river, for instance.

And, of course, he could not refuse to recognize the wedding officially and put on record the name, ancestry and title of the maharajah’s legal first wife.  Nor could he keep away, because, with amazingly shrewd judgment, Yasmini had contrived the novelty of welding wedding and coronation ceremony and festival in one.  Instead of two successive outbursts of squandering, there would be only one.  It was economic progress.  One could not withhold approval of it.  He must go in person, smile, give a valuable present (paid for by the government, of course), and say the proper thing.

One modicum of consolation did ooze out of the rind of Samson’s situation.  It would have been no easier, be reflected, to say the right thing at the right time at the coronation ceremony, especially to the right people, if that treasure should already have been dug up and reposing in the coffers of the Indian Government.  After a certain sort of bargain, one’s tongue feels unpleasant in one’s cheek.

Sialpore, however, was much more taken up with preparations for the colossal coronation-wedding feast than with Samson’s digging.  Yasmini went on her palace roof each day to see how the trees leaned this and that way, as the earth was mined from under them.  And Tom Tripe, standing guard on the bastion of the fort to oversee the removal of certain stores and fittings before the English should march out finally and the maharajah’s men march in, could see the destruction of the pipal trees too.  So, for that matter, could Dick Blaine, on the day when he took some of the gang and blocked up the mouth of the mine on the hill with cemented masonry—­to prevent theft; and cursed himself afterward for being such a fool as to brick up his luncheon basket inside the tunnel, to say nothing of all the men’s water bottles and some of their food and tools.  But nobody else in Sialpore took very much notice of Samson’s excavation, and nobody cared about Dick’s mine.