"An' when you come, Dannie, I'll tell you how we're goin' to work it
to git them hundred and fifty dollars that Dave's goin' to 'arn by
trappin' them birds fur that feller up North. I have a right to it,
kase I'm his pap: an' when I get it, I'll give you half--that is, if
you do right by me while I'm hidin' here. I'll give you half that
bar'l, too, when we find it. Then you kin have your circus hoss an'
all your other nice things, can't you?" added Godfrey, playfully
poking his son in the ribs.

Dan's face relaxed a little, but his father's affected enthusiasm was
not as contagious now as it was when the subject of the buried
treasure was first brought up for discussion. Godfrey had no
intention of renewing his efforts to find the barrel--he could not
have been hired to go into that potato-patch after what had happened
there--but it was well enough, he thought, to hold it up to Dan as an
inducement. Besides, if he could get the boy interested in the matter
again, and induce him to prosecute the search, and Dan should, by any
accident, stumble upon the barrel, so much the better for himself.
The great desire of his life would be attained. He would be rich, and
that, too, without work.

"Why can't you steal the canoe yourself?" asked Dan.

"Kase I've got to pack up an' get ready to leave here; that's why.
It'll take me from now till the time you come back to get all my
traps together."

Dan hurriedly made a mental inventory of the valuables his father
possessed and which he had seen in the camp, and the result showed