except in general terms, she had imparted it to no one. Everybody,
in coming along, had been buying a pig in a poke--though to be sure
Aunt Jane had paid for it. The Scotchman, Cuthbert Vane had told
me incidentally, had insured himself against loss by demanding a
retaining fee beforehand. Somehow my opinion, both of his honesty
and of his intelligence, had risen since I knew this. As to
Cuthbert Vane, he had come purely in a spirit of adventure, and had
paid his own expenses from the start.

However, now the great moment was at hand. But before it comes, I
will here set down the treasure-story of Leeward Island, as I
gathered it later, a little here and there, and pieced it together
into a coherent whole through many dreaming hours.

In 1820, the city of Lima, in Peru, being threatened by the
revolutionaries under Bolivar and San Martin, cautious folk began
to take thought for their possessions. To send them out upon the
high seas under a foreign flag seemed to offer the best hope of
safety, and soon there was more gold afloat on the Pacific than at
any time since the sailing of the great plate-galleons of the
seventeenth century. Captain Sampson, of the brig _Bonny Lass_,
found himself with a passenger for nowhere in particular in the
shape of a certain Spanish merchant of great wealth, reputed
custodian of the private funds of the bishop of Lima. This
gentleman brought with him, besides some scanty personal
baggage--for he took ship in haste--a great iron-bound chest. Four
stout sailors of the _Bonny Lass_ staggered under the weight of it.

The _Bonny Lass_ cruised north along the coast, the passenger
desiring to put in at Panama in the hope that word might reach him