"I believe that's a buckeye," said Richard. He examined it carefully on all sides, then called excitedly:

"Aw, look here! See those letters scratched on the side--'D. D.'? That stands for _my_ name, Dare-devil d.i.c.k. I'm going to keep it."

"That's the cunningest thing I ever saw," declared Georgina in a tone both admiring and envious, which plainly showed that she wished the initials were such as could be claimed by a Gory George. Then she picked up the pouch and thrust in her hand. Something rustled. It was a letter.

Evidently it had been forwarded many times, for the envelope was entirely criss-crossed with names that had been written and blotted out that new ones might be added. All they could make out was "Mrs.

Henry"--"Texas" and "Ma.s.s."

"I'd like to have that stamp for my alb.u.m," said Richard. "It's foreign.

Seems to me I've got one that looks something like it, but I'm not sure.

Maybe the letter will tell who the pouch belongs to."

"But we can't read other people's letters," objected Georgina.

"Well, who wants to? It won't be reading it just to look at the head and tail, will it?"

"No," admitted Georgina, hesitatingly. "Though it does seem like peeking."

"Well, if you lost something wouldn't you rather whoever found it should peek and find out it was yours, than to have it stay lost forever?"

"Yes, I s'pose so."

"Let's look, then."

Two heads bent over the sheet spread out on Richard's knee. They read slowly in unison, "Dear friend," then turned over the paper and sought the last line. "Your grateful friend Dave."

"We don't know any more now than we did before," said Georgina, virtuously folding up the letter and slipping it back into the envelope.

"Let's take it to Uncle Darcy. Then he'll let us go along and ring the bell when he calls, 'Found.'"

Richard had two objections to this. "Who'd pay him for doing it?

Besides, it's gold money, and anybody who loses that much would advertise for it in the papers. Let's keep it till this week's papers come out, and then we'll have the fun of taking it to the person who lost it."

"It wouldn't be safe for us to keep it," was Georgina's next objection.

"It's gold money and burglars might find out we had it."

"Then I'll tell you"----Richard's face shone as he made the suggestion--"Let's _bury_ it. That will keep it safe till we can find the owner, and when we dig it up we can play it's pirate gold and it'll be like finding real treasure."

"Lets!" agreed Georgina. "We can keep out something, a nickel or a dime, and when we go to dig up the pouch we can throw it over toward the place where we buried the bag and say, 'Brother, go find your brother,' the way Tom Sawyer did. Then we'll be certain to hit the spot."

Richard picked up the compa.s.s, and rubbed the polished sides of the nut in which it was set.

"I'll keep this out instead of a nickel. I wonder what the fellow's name was that this D. D. stands for?"

Half an hour later two b.l.o.o.d.y-minded sea-robbers slipped through the back gate of the Milford place and took their stealthy way out into the dunes. No fierce mustachios or hoop ear-rings marked them on this occasion as the Dread Destroyer or the Menace of the Main. The time did not seem favorable for donning their real costumes. So one went disguised as a dainty maiden in a short pink frock and long brown curls, and the other as a st.u.r.dy boy in a gra.s.s-stained linen suit with a hole in the knee of his stocking. But their speech would have betrayed their evil business had anyone been in earshot of it. One would have thought it was

"_Wild Roger come again.

He spoke of forays and of frays upon the Spanish Main._"

Having real gold to bury made the whole affair seem a real adventure.

They were recounting to each other as they dug, the b.l.o.o.d.y fight it had taken to secure this lot of treasure.

Down in a hollow where the surrounding sand-ridges sheltered them from view, they crouched over a small basket they had brought with them and performed certain ceremonies. First the pouch was wrapped in many sheets of tin foil, which Richard had been long in collecting from various tobacco-loving friends. When that was done it flashed in the sun like a nugget of wrinkled silver. This was stuffed into a baking-powder can from which the label had been carefully sc.r.a.ped, and on whose lid had been scratched with a nail, the names Georgina Huntingdon and Richard Moreland, with the date.

"We'd better put our everyday names on it instead of our pirate names,"

Gory George suggested. "For if anything should happen that some other pirate dug it up first they wouldn't know who the Dread Destroyer and the Menace of the Main were."

Lastly, from the basket was taken the end of a wax candle, several matches and a stick of red sealing-wax, borrowed from Cousin James'

desk. Holding the end of the sealing-wax over the lighted candle until it was soft and dripping, Richard daubed it around the edge of the can lid, as he had seen the man in the express office seal packages. He had always longed to try it himself. There was something peculiarly pleasing in the smell of melted sealing-wax. Georgina found it equally alluring.

She took the stick away from him when it was about half used, and finished it.

"There won't be any to put back in Cousin James' desk if you keep on using it," he warned her.

"I'm not using any more than you did," she answered, and calmly proceeded to smear on the remainder. "If you had let me seal with the first end of the stick, you'd have had all the last end to save."

All this time Captain Kidd sat close beside them, an interested spectator, but as they began digging the hole he rushed towards it and pawed violently at each shovelful of sand thrown out.

"Aw, let him help!" Richard exclaimed when Georgina ordered him to stop.

"He ought to have a part in it because he found the pouch and was starting to bury it his own self when I took it away from him and spoiled his fun."

Georgina saw the justice of the claim and allowed Captain Kidd to join in as he pleased, but no sooner did they stop digging to give him a chance than he stopped also.

"Rats!" called Richard in a shrill whisper.

At that familiar word the dog began digging so frantically that the sand flew in every direction. Each time he paused for breath Richard called "Rats" again. It doubled the interest for both children to have the dog take such frantic and earnest part in their game.

When the hole was p.r.o.nounced deep enough the can was dropped in, the sand shoveled over it and tramped down, and a marker made. A long, forked stick, broken from a bayberry bush, was run into the ground so that only the fork of it was visible. Then at twenty paces from the stick, Richard stepping them off in four directions, consulting the little compa.s.s in so doing, Georgina placed the markers, four sections of a broken crock rescued from the ash-barrel and brought down in the basket for that especial purpose.

"We'll let it stay buried for a week," said Richard when all was done.

"Unless somebody claims it sooner. If they don't come in a week, then we'll know they're never coming, and the gold will be ours."

CHAPTER XV

A NARROW ESCAPE

MR. MILFORD was stretched out in a hammock on the front porch of the bungalow when the children came back from the dunes with their empty basket. They could not see him as they climbed up the terrace, the porch being high above them and draped with vines; and he deep in a new book was only vaguely conscious of approaching voices.

They were discussing the "Rescues of Rosalind," the play they had seen the night before on the films. Their shrill, eager tones would have attracted the attention of anyone less absorbed than Mr. Milford.

"I'll bet you couldn't," Georgina was saying. "If you were gagged and bound the way Rosalind was, you _couldn't_ get loose, no matter how you squirmed and twisted."

"Come back in the garage and try me," Richard retorted. "I'll prove it to you that I can."

"_Always_ an automobile dashes up and there's a chase. It's been that way in every movie I ever saw," announced Georgina with the air of one who has attended nightly through many seasons.