Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/381

Rh Like all hardened rascals who live but for the lust of the moment, Old Man Veldmann had a gutta-percha disposition, and so, on the swift rebound, he quite forgot the warnings after the rumblings ceased. Of all that good gold was he thinking, and he chuckled at a little idea just hatched under the eaves of his grizzled old thatch.

"You be good and stay here, girl," he said to Sally who had recovered from her swoon. "I'll be back in a shake of a lamb's tail."

To make sure of her obedience, he bound her hands and feet, then started back along the sea-wall. Larone, from an eyrie on Cone mountain, was watching the manœuvres on the shore of Rainbow Bay when he saw the bow-legged, bent old figure walk along the gorge and then pass over the divide to the southern slope.

"It is the cavern," he said to himself, and hurried after the retreating figure, only to lose sight of it in the forest.

So he turned to the house on the mountain, passed through the doorway and the wide hall, searched for a candle, descended to the cellar, lifted a trap-door, and lighting the wax, went down another flight of stone-steps into a gloomy dungeon.

Meanwhile the old figure toiled on through the woods, still chuckling to himself over his plan, until he reached the glen, to find only "the Swede" still on guard, Pete having gone on some errand to the shore.

Cunningly the old rascal addressed the pink-complexioned one.

"Say, Pink, that's a hell uv a lot of gold."