Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/173

Rh "Come, dad," he urged.

"All right, but forget it when I'm through.

"It goes back forty years, Philip. I can remember it as clearly as if it took place yesterday. Your grandfather was sitting on the porch here, reading The Log, the same old Log, at the usual hour—he was always on schedule to the split second in everything he did—when some old tramp, half seaman, half derelict, staggered up the path.

"He was ragged and half-starved, I guess, and under his arm he carried that painting, wrapped in oilskin. He gripped it hard, as if it were his own soul he was carrying, and sometimes I thought it was. He reached the steps and almost fell at your grandfather's feet. Of course, we took him in, fed him, and put him up for the night. Later he seemed to feel better, and told us an odd sort of story of some island in the French West Indies, haunted, and entirely deserted because the long line of owners had had so many misfortunes there,—volcanoes, epidemics, assassinations—everything. There was also some preternatural quality about the place. That's not worth repeating, but he did give some practical reasons for its condition; said it was mixed up in litigation in the courts—and French colonial courts are bad enough—the titles were all snarled up or something. But the important thing to the old fellow was the treasure that he swore was there.

"It was a weird mixture anyway you look at it, but, though as a boy I wanted to believe every word of it, even then I had the sense to call it a fairy tale.—Which it was—" he interjected half cautiously, torn between his desire to "get