My father's papers didn't help me much. They were mostly fragments of stories and poems. It was a sad thing to sit by my lamp night after night as my father had done before me, and read over those scraps of broken literature, feeling in every line the marvellous promise and powers that had been frittered so idly away. Young as I was, I was judge enough to recognize the work of a master story-teller, and even the authentic ring of poetry, in the unfinished sketches before me. Though I tried to remain loyal to my father's memory I couldn't prevent the cry from rising to my heart, "Oh dad, dad, why did you waste your days hunting for that accursed treasure when you might have been among the greatest writers of the land?" Of the stories I sorted out those which seemed to be based in any way on the one great story of the hidden gold. Yet even so I couldn't learn much, for my father modified his facts for dramatic effect, heightening the colours here and omitting the lesser links of the narrative elsewhere, so that I couldn't piece together anything consecutive. Indeed my father's purpose, so I judged, hadn't been to write a connected history. Elements of the affair appealed to him first in this light and then in that, and he had transmuted them into imaginative sketches, suggesting an underlying basis in fact, but misleading in detail. There was one story which appealed to me particularly, and it was the only one which could be called complete. It appealed to me because it reminded me of the night at Sunset Towers when my father had told the story of the cursing of the treasure and the terrible fulfilment of the curse. Here was a tale evidently based on the priest's confession. The setting was much the same as that of the story I knew, yet there were details which showed that my father had in mind not only the valley of the tombs but the coast-line round the _Dolphin_, and so the incidents were brought more vividly home to me than they would otherwise have been. First there was an account of the discovery of the treasure by a party of adventurers; but when half of it had been safely brought to the light a quarrel broke out, and the Captain of the band found himself standing almost alone against a mutinous crew. But he was a wily man, and succeeded in tricking his enemies; and having trapped them in the cave where the treasure lay he rolled a huge boulder to the cave's mouth and imprisoned them alive. So far the story was only a variant of the one I had heard so thrillingly told on that memorable night; and the account of the frenzy which overwhelmed the Captain with terror and remorse was much the same as in the account I knew so well of the Mad Captain and which now, with my own hands stained with blood, I could appreciate to the full. But after this the story changed. For a stranger had somehow stolen the plans and learnt of the hidden gold, though he didn't know the secret of the entrance to the cave. When