Part 2

Again I plunged my spade into the damp sand. I thrilled all through as I felt it scrape against something hard--something metallic! Two more shovelfuls and I had disclosed the object. I picked it up and held it out to Graham. Despite our eagerness we burst into a gale of laughter. It was a tomato can--quite empty, too!

Graham's laughter stopped suddenly. "Oh!" she gasped, "how did it _get_ there? We are on the right track! Uncle Abner must have thrown it in when he buried the treasure!"

"Great!" I cried, and then in sudden afterthought: "unless----!"

"Unless----?"

"Unless," I said, "unless _someone else_ has been here before us!"

She looked into my eyes with horror at the thought, twisting her handkerchief nervously in her slender hands.

"Heavens!" she exclaimed, "you _do_ think of the most unpleasant things!" Then, waving her arms excitedly. "Dig!" she cried. "For goodness' sake, dig! Let's have this suspense over with!"

I did dig and presently my industry was rewarded by the discovery of an empty beer bottle and a sardine can.

"Uncle Abner lived high, out here on the key," I said, holding the trophies up for her inspection.

"Dig! Dig!" was her only answer.

Again I got to work. This time I suppose I dug for three-quarters of an hour. The hole grew quite deep, but disclosed not so much as a buried button. I was very warm and very hungry. So I pronounced myself exhausted and asked Graham if she wouldn't let me rest a minute.

She said I could, so we got the captains to bring up my lunch basket and Graham's parasol from the boats. Then we settled down to a little spread on the spot. We fastened the parasol to a shovel handle and Graham let me sit down beside her in the shade. I've never had such fun lunching as on that day. The sandwiches were so good and Graham and the ginger ale so refreshing thas I was heart-broken when there wasn't a drop or a crumb or an excuse to sit there any longer.

So I dug again, and we were such friends by that time that Graham kept telling me not to work too hard and get all tired out. After a few moments she gave a little scream of delight and leaning over picked a corroded coin from the shovelful I had thrown out. I took it from her and rubbed its surface. It looked like a Mexican dollar, but I couldn't make out.

"Oh, won't you dig?" cried Graham, in an agony of impatience.

Once more I thrust my spade into the sand. It stopped suddenly. This time it was neither can nor bottle, but something which toon proved to be a sound oak plank. A few mad spadefuls more and it was clear that the plank was the cover of a heavy box, cleated, bound and hinged with iron.

Graham stood above me gazing down with clenched hands and dilated eyes.

The box was wedged so fast in the sand that when I first tried to lift it I mistook the sand's firm grip for the weight of gold within. After some fifteen minutes' rapid work I managed to dig it clear. But when I lifted it my heart sank. It was very light!

I tossed it out of the hole as easily as I could have tossed an empty steamer trunk. It fell upon its side and the cover dropped open, revealing the interior. I leaped from the hole and stood beside Graham. She was staring fixedly at the box and as I came near her she reached out and steadied herself by placing her hand upon my arm.

Alas! for our dream of buried treasure! Save for one object, the box was empty. Rushing forward I reached in and drew that object forth. It was a New York newspaper, more than a year old and wrapped within it was a Seaboard Air Line timetable, of equally ancient date.

These pathetic relics I placed in Graham's hands. She stared at them blankly.

"Well, partner," I said, "there's the treasure! I make you a free gift of my half of it."

The comedy of it all burst in on me now. The lawyer's pedantic letter. Uncle Abner's chart and acid note to me, my race with Graham--Graham, whom I had mistaken for a gray-bearded old man upon the train--my meeting with her lovely self upon the key, our partnership and its result. I laughed, and laughed, and laughed, until I nearly fell into the pit that I had digged. Then suddenly--quite as suddenly as I had begun--I stopped, for I saw Graham. What a selfish beast a man can be! Could I not have foreseen that this insane treasure hunt which was little more than sport to me, might to Graham be a vitally important thing? What did I know of her circumstances? What right had I to conclude that she----? Outlined sharply against the sunset sky I saw her swaying where she stood. There were tears in her eyes. I hurried to her and she leaned against me weakly.

"I am sorry," I said, "awfully, awfully sorry!"

She looked at me and tried to smile. "I am glad," she said in a quavering voice, "I am glad that you can laugh. I wish _I_ could."

"Try!" I begged, "oh, please do try! I love you when you laugh--when you _don't_ laugh, too, of course--but really, Graham, really! I cannot bear to see you cry!"

I don't know just how I got them, but I suddenly found that I was holding both her hands, as I entreated. I don't think she knew it any more than I did when I took them.

"Don't feel badly about it!" I begged her. "What's the use? You must see that it's a joke--a joke on both of us. Either someone got here first and took the treasure off, or Uncle Abner thought he'd have post-mortem fun with his surviving relatives. You see, Graham," (I think I may have said "Graham _dear_") "you see the joke, don't you?"

"The wicked old man!" she cried. "It's no joke to me. It comes near a tragedy! It cost me almost everything I had to come here. If that's a joke, I call it a hard one!" She was radiant in her anger. I was spell-bound as I watched her.

[Illustration: Will Grefé's Idea of the Heroine.]

"That is tough," I exclaimed, "you have no idea how sorry I am--honestly you haven't!" I think I must have squeezed her hands, for she looked at them and drew them from mine with a conscious little blush.

"Don't you think we'd better be going to the boats?" she ventured. "It's after sunset."

"Since you put it as a question, no!" I answered. "I see no reason why we should go to the boats. As for the sunset, they have these every night down here; but you and I don't meet every day upon this key. We ought to make the most of it!"

"But it's all done--the treasure hunt," she said, digging a little hole in the sand with the toe of her white canvas shoe.

"It's _not_ all done!" I cried. "_Yours_ may be finished, but mine is just beginning and I give you fair warning, here and now, dear Graham," (I said the "dear" quite plainly this time), "that this _new_ treasure hunt of mine is going to make the old one look like the picnic party it was!"

"Really--really----" she began.

"Yes, really!" I exclaimed.

"I assure you," she faltered; "I assure you, I don't know--I don't know what you----"

"Oh, Graham, Graham!" I cried, "you've been reading novels. That's what girls always say in novels--'I don't know what you mean.' Yet, they all _do_ know what he means, just as well as you know what _I_ mean!"

The digging she was doing with her little slipper interested her more than ever now.

"Graham," I continued, "whether you knew or not, I would have told you what I meant. I wouldn't lose the luxury of telling you, for worlds! This is it: I came here to hunt for treasure----"

"_Buried_ treasure?" she inquired, smiling faintly at the toe of her white slipper.

"But we didn't find the buried treasure," I pleaded. "_You_ found nothing but me--to help you dig. But _I_ discovered something more than buried treasure. I found out where there was a treasure--a living treasure--greater than jewels and gold could ever be! It's a treasure I can't reach by digging in the sand, Graham. It must be given to me freely, and by you!"

She was silent for a moment, then she faced me.

"It's because you're sorry for me," she said, flushing; "I thank you, but I can't accept a sacrifice like that!"

"No, dear Graham," I persisted, "it's not because I'm sorry for you. I'll be sorry for you, though, if you don't take me now--sorry to see you dogged, and pestered, and followed everywhere, and worshipped by a man like me, until you have to take him to avoid his persistence!"

She smiled at me frankly. "You have no idea," she laughed, "how I long to say 'This is so sudden,' but after 'I don't know what you mean,' I am afraid to!"

"Do save yourself a lot of trouble," I warned again, "by taking me now, Graham, instead of waiting until I get you."

"I suppose," she said, "I suppose I might at well."

I shan't tell you what happened then, but in my haste to do something (mind I don't say what) I almost tumbled into Uncle Abner's treasure pit.

* * * * *

The "Jennie May" sailed home, a little later, without the passenger she had brought to Lone Palm Key. Graham and I returned in the steam launch. When I insisted that the only two surviving relatives of Uncle Abner be made one at once, Graham said--you know what she said, as well as I do. She simply couldn't help it. It was:

"But, really, this is so sudden!"

END

[Illustration: C. D. Williams' Idea of the Heroine.]