Perhaps because of the secret excitement under which I was laboring, I seemed that evening unusually aware of the emotional fluctuations of those about me. Violet looked grimmer than ever, so that I judged her struggles with her mundane consciousness to have been exceptionally severe. Captain Magnus seemed even beyond his wont restless, loose-jointed and wandering-eyed, and performed extraordinary feats of sword-swallowing. Mr. Shaw was very silent, and his forehead knitted now and then into a reflective frown. As for myself, I had much ado to hide my abstraction, and turned cold from head to foot with alarm when I heard my own voice addressing Crusoe as Benjy.

A faint ripple of surprise passed round the table.

“Named your dog over again, Miss Jinny?” inquired Mr. Tubbs. Mr. Tubbs had adopted a facetiously paternal manner toward me. I knew in anticipation of the moment when he would invite me to call him Uncle Ham.

“I say, you know,” expostulated Cuthbert Vane, “I thought Crusoe rather a nice name. Never heard of any chap named Benjy that lived on an island.”

“When I was a little girl, Virginia,” remarked Aunt Jane, with the air of immense age and wisdom which she occasionally assumed, “my grandmother your great-grandmother, of course, my love would never allow me to name my dolls a second time. She did not approve of changeableness. And I am sure it must be partly due to your great-grandmother’s teaching that I always know my own mind directly about everything. She was quite a remarkable woman, and very firm. Firmness has been considered a family trait with us. When her husband died your great-grandfather, you know, dear she rose above her grief and made him take some very disagreeable medicine to the very last, long after the doctors had given up hope. As some relation or other said, I think your Great-Aunt Susan’s father-in-law, anybody else would have allowed poor John Harding to die in peace, but trust Eliza to be firm to the end.”

Under cover of this bit of family history I tried to rally from my confusion, but I knew my cheeks were burning. Looks of deepening surprise greeted the scarlet emblems of discomfiture that I hung out.

“By heck, bet there’s a feller at home named Benjy!” cackled Mr. Tubbs shrilly, and for once I blessed him.

Aunt Jane turned upon him her round innocent eyes.

“Oh, no, Mr. Tubbs,” she assured him, “I don’t think a single one of them was named Benjy!”

The laughter which followed this gave me time to get myself in hand again.

“Crusoe it is and will be,” I asserted. “Like Great-Grandmother Harding, I don’t approve of changeableness. It happens that a girl I know at home has a dog named Benjy.” Which happened fortunately to be true, for otherwise I should have been obliged to invent it. But the girl is a cat, and the dog a miserable little high-bred something, all shivers and no hair. I should never have thought of him in the same breath with Crusoe.

That evening Mr. Shaw addressed the gathering at the camp-fire which we made small and bright, and then sat well away from because of the heat and in a few words gave it as his opinion that any further search in the cave under the point was useless. (If he had known the strange confirmatory echo which this awoke in my mind!) He proposed that the shore of the island to a reasonable distance on either side of the bay-entrance should be surveyed, with a view to discover whether some other cave did not exist which would answer the description given by the dying Hopperdown as well as that first explored.

Mr. Shaw’s words were addressed to the ladies, the organizer and financier, respectively, of the expedition, to the very deliberate exclusion of Mr. Tubbs. But he might as well have made up his mind to recognize the triumvirate. Enthroned on a camp-chair sat Aunt Jane, like a little goddess of the Dollar Sign, and on one hand Mr. Tubbs smiled blandly, and on the other Violet gloomed. You saw that in secret council Mr. Shaw’s announcement had been foreseen and deliberated upon.

Mr. Tubbs, who understood very well the rôle of power behind the throne, left it to Violet to reply. And Miss Browne, who carried an invisible rostrum with her wherever she went, now alertly mounted it.

“My friends,” she began, “those dwelling on a plane where the Material is all may fail to grasp the thought which I shall put before you this evening. They may not understand that if a different psychic atmosphere had existed on this island from the first we should not now be gazing into a blank wall of Doubt. My friends, this expedition was, so to speak, called from the Void by Thought. Thought it was, as realized in steamships and other ephemeral forms, which bore us thither over rolling seas. How then can it be otherwise than that Thought should influence our fortunes that success should be unable to materialize before a persistent attitude of Negation? My friends, you will perceive that there is no break in this sequence of ideas; all is remorseless logic.

“In order to withdraw myself from this atmosphere of Negation, for these several days past I have sought seclusion. There in silence I have asserted the power of Positive over Negative Thought, gazing meanwhile into the profound depths of the All. My friends, an answer has been vouchsafed us; I have had a vision of that for which we seek. Now at last, in a spirit of glad confidence, we may advance. For, my friends, the chest is buried in sand.”

With this triumphant announcement Miss Higglesby-Browne sat down. A heavy silence succeeded. It was broken by a murmur from Mr. Tubbs.

“Wonderful that’s what I call wonderful! Talk about the eloquence of the ancients I believe, by gum, this is on a par with Congressional oratory!”

“A vision, Miss Browne,” said Mr. Shaw gravely, “must be an interesting thing. I have never seen one myself, having no talents that way, but in the little Scotch town of Dumbiedykes where I was born there was an old lady with a remarkable gift of the second sight. Simple folk, not being acquainted with the proper terms to fit the case, called her the Wise Woman. Well, one day my aunt had been to the neighboring town of Micklestane, five miles off, and on the way back to Dumbiedykes she lost her purse. It had three sovereigns in it a great sum to my aunt. In her trouble of mind she hurried to the Wise Woman a thing to make her pious father turn in his grave. The Wise Woman gazed into the All, I suppose, and told my aunt not to fret herself, for she had had a vision of the purse and it lay somewhere on the food between Micklestane and Dumbiedykes.

“Now, Miss Browne, I’ll take the liberty of drawing a moral from this Story to fit the present instance: where on the road between Micklestane and Dumbiedykes is the chest?”

Though startled at the audacity of Mr. Shaw, I was unprepared for the spasm of absolute fury that convulsed Miss Browne’s countenance.

“Mr. Shaw,” she thundered, “if you intend to draw a parallel between me and an ignorant Scotch peasant!”

“Not at all,” said Mr. Shaw calmly, “forebye the Wise Woman was a most respectable person and had a grandson in the kirk. The point is, can you indicate with any degree of exactness the whereabouts of the chest? For there is a good deal of sand on the shores of this island.”

“Oh, but Mr. Shaw!” interposed Aunt Jane tremulously. “In the sand why, I am sure that is such a helpful thought! It shows quite plainly that the chest is not buried in in a rock, you know.” She gave the effect of a person trying to deflect a thunderstorm with a palm-leaf fan.

“Dynamite–­dynamite blow the lid off the island!” mumbled Captain Magnus.

“If any one has a definite plan to propose,” said Mr. Shaw, “I am very ready to consider it. I have understood myself from the first to be acting under the directions of the ladies who planned this expedition. As a mere matter of honesty to my employers, I should feel bound to spare no effort to find the treasure, even if my own interests were not so vitally concerned. Considering its importance to myself, no one can well suppose that I am not doing all in my power to bring the chest to light. Tomorrow, if the sea is favorable, it is my intention to set out in the boat to determine the character of such other caves as exist on the island. I’ll want you with me, lad, and you too, Magnus.”

Captain Magnus looked more ill at ease than usual. “Did you think o’ rowin’ the whole way round the dinged chunk o’ rock?” he inquired.

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Shaw with an impatient frown. So the man, in addition to his other unattractive qualities, was turning out a shirk! Hitherto, with his strength and feverish if intermittent energy, plus an almost uncanny skill with boats, he had been of value. “Certainly not. We are going to make a careful survey of the cliffs, and explore every likely opening as thoroughly as possible. It will be slow work and hard. As to circumnavigating the island, I see no point in it, for I don’t believe the chest can have been carried any great distance from the cove.”

“Oh all right,” said Captain Magnus.

Mr. Tubbs, who had been whispering with Aunt Jane and Miss Browne, now with a very made-to-order casualness proposed to the two ladies that they take a stroll on the beach. This meant that the triumvirate were to withdraw for discussion, and amounted to notice that henceforth the counsels of the company would be divided.

Captain Magnus, after an uneasy wriggle or two, said he guessed he’d turn in. Cookie’s snores were already audible between splashes of the waves on the sands. The Scotchman, Cuthbert Vane and I continued to sit by the dying fire. Mr. Shaw had got out his pipe and sat silently puffing at it. He might have been sitting in solitude on the topmost crag of the island, so remote seemed that impassive presence. Was it possible that ever, except in the sweet madness of a dream, I had been in his arms, pillowed and cherished there, that he had called me lassie

I lifted my eyes to the kind honest gaze of Cuthbert Vane. It was as faithful as Crusoe’s and no more embarrassing. A great impulse of affection moved me. I was near putting out a hand to pat his splendid head. Oh, how easy, comfortable, and calm would be a life with Cuthbert Vane! I wasn’t thinking about the title now Cuthbert would be quite worth while for himself. For a moment I almost saw with Aunt Jane’s eyes. Fancy trotting him out before the girls! stole insidiously into my mind. How much more dazzling than a plain Scotch sailor

I turned in bitterness and yearning from the silent figure by the fire.

I think in an earlier lifetime I must have been a huntress and loved to pursue the game that fled.