They passed the buildings of the Experiment Station and continued on, amid pine and dogwood, elms and beeches. They were travelling parallel with the Severn, and not very distant, as occasional glimpses of blue water, through the trees, revealed. Gradually, the timber thinned. The river became plainly visible with the Bay itself shimmering to the fore. Then the trees ended abruptly, and they came out on Greenberry Point: a long, flat, triangular-shaped piece of ground, possibly two hundred yards across the base, and three hundred from base to point. The two men halted, and looked around. "Somewhere near here, possibly just where your horse is standing, is the treasure," said Macloud. "Can't you feel its presence?" "No, I can't!" laughed Croyden, "and that appears to be my only chance, for I can't see a trace of the trees which formed the square." "Be not cast down!" Macloud admonished. "Remember, you didn't expect to find things marked off for you." "No, _I_ didn't! but I thought _you_ did." "That was only to stir you up. I anticipated even more adverse conditions. It's amazingly easier than I dared to hope." "Thunder! man! we can't dig six feet deep over all of forty acres. We shall have the whole of Annapolis over to help us before we've done a square of forty feet." "You're too liberal!" laughed Macloud. "Twenty feet would be ample." Then he sobered. "The instructions say: seven hundred and fifty feet back, from the extreme tip of Greenberry Point, is the quadrangle of trees. That was in 1720, one hundred and ninety years ago. They must have been of good size then--hence, they would be of the greater size, now, or else have disappeared entirely. There isn't a single tree which could correspond with Parmenter's, closer than four hundred yards, and, as the point would have been receding rather than gaining, we can assume, with tolerable certainty, that the beeches have vanished--either from decay or from wind storms, which must be very severe over in this exposed land. Hence, must not our first quest be for some trace of the trees?" "That sounds reasonable," said Croyden, "and, if the Point has receded, which is altogether likely, then we are pretty near the place." "Yes!--if the Point has simply receded, but if it has shifted laterally, as well, the problem is not so simple." "Let us go out to the Point, and look at the ruins of the light-house. If we can get near enough to ascertain when it was built, it may help us. Evidently there was none erected here, in Parmenter's time, else he would not have chosen this place to hide his treasure." But the light-house was a barren yield. It was a crumbling mass of ruins, lying out in water, possibly fifty feet--the real house was a bug-light farther out in the Bay. "Well, there's no one to see us, so why shouldn't we make a search for the trees?" said Croyden. "Hold my horse!" said Macloud, dismounting.