"Was it as easy as THAT?" I gasped.

"It was as easy as THAT!" said Edgar.

I sank back into my chair and let the magazines slide to the floor.
What fiction story was there in any one of them so enthralling as
the actual possibilities that lay before me? In two hours I might
be bending over a pot of gold, a sea chest stuffed with pearls and
rubies!

I began to recall all the stories I had heard as a boy of treasure
buried along the coast by Kidd on his return voyage from the
Indies. Where along the Jersey sea-line were there safe harbors?
The train on which we were racing south had its rail head at
Barnegat Bay. And between Barnegat and Red Bank there now was but
one other inlet, that of the Manasquan River. It might be Barnegat;
it might be Manasquan. It could not be a great distance from
either; toward the ocean down a broad, sandy road. The season had
passed and the windows of the cottages and bungalows on either side
of the road were barricaded with planks. On the verandas hammocks
abandoned to the winds hung in tatters, on the back porches the
doors of empty refrigerators swung open on one hinge, and on every
side above the fields of gorgeous golden-rod rose signs reading
"For Rent." When we had progressed in silence for a mile, the sandy
avenue lost itself in the deeper sand of the beach, and the horse
of his own will came to a halt.

On one side we were surrounded by locked and deserted bathing
houses, on the other by empty pavilions shuttered and barred
against the winter, but still inviting one to 'Try our salt water