Page:The Specimen Case.djvu/314

Rh babbling about a buried treasure somewhere else. Eh, Land?"

The man addressed looked down sheepishly. "It be common talk hereabouts, and was so in grandfeyther's time, that there be hundreds of pounds of gold buried under the ruins of old Carston House, higher up the Channel," he said.

Elgood started and looked at Timms. The same thought struck them both: Had they been sent mysteriously down here to learn a local legend, that would otherwise never have reached them? Was there really a treasure after all, and that at their very doors?

The voice of Mrs. Winton recalled them to their surroundings; she was formally discharging them, with no worse a stain to their names than the presumption of mental weakness. They were once more free to pursue their chimera, and just eight hours after first setting out, they again weighed anchor and beat up the Channel.

If the affairs of William Elgood were not progressing altogether satisfactorily abroad, he would have had still more occasion for annoyance could he have witnessed the sequence of events that his absence brought about at home. Hardly had the Nymph cleared the harbour before Eustace Vernon—how informed of his opportunity I cannot pretend to know—walked openly along the lane that bounds one side of the garden around Carston Cottage. It happened at that moment that Letty was coming from the house, wearing her prettiest dress, to get some flowers. Now the real gist of William Elgood's remarks to Vernon, divested of much that was superfluous padding—but not on that account calculated to break their force—on that memorable occasion referred to at the beginning of this narrative, was to the effect that the artist was never to enter the grounds of Carson Cottage again. Letty would not have dreamed of disobeying her