"My idea," said I, "of a happy home is an eight-room house in a grove of
live-oaks by the side of a _charco_ on a Texas prairie. A piano," I went
on, "with an automatic player in the sitting-room, three thousand head
of cattle under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies always
hitched at a post for 'the missus'--and May Martha Mangum to spend the
profits of the ranch as she pleases, and to abide with me, and put my
slippers and pipe away every day in places where they cannot be found of
evenings. That," said I, "is what is to be; and a fig--a dried, Smyrna,
dago-stand fig--for your curriculums, cults, and philosophy."

"She is meant for higher things," repeated Goodloe Banks.

"Whatever she is meant for," I answered, just now she is out of pocket.
And I shall find her as soon as I can without aid of the colleges."

"The game is blocked," said Goodloe, putting down a domino; and we had
the beer.

Shortly after that a young farmer whom I knew came into town and brought
me a folded blue paper. He said his grandfather had just died. I
concealed a tear, and he went on to say that the old man had jealously
guarded this paper for twenty years. He left it to his family as part of
his estate, the rest of which consisted of two mules and a hypotenuse of
non-arable land.

The sheet of paper was of the old, blue kind used during the rebellion
of the abolitionists against the secessionists. It was dated June
14, 1863, and it described the hiding-place of ten burro-loads of
gold and silver coin valued at three hundred thousand dollars. Old
Rundle--grandfather of his grandson, Sam--was given the information by