"I don't see what you're to do, except to do it all over again," she announced--"Now, don't laugh! It may sound foolish, but many a thing has been found on a second seeking--and this, surely, is worth a second, or a third, or even many seekings." "If there were any assurance of ultimate success, it would pay to spend a lifetime hunting. The two essentials, however, are wanting: the extreme tip of Greenberry Point in 1720, and the beech-trees. We made the best guess at their location. More than that, the zone of exploration embraced every possible extreme of territory--yet, we failed. It will make nothing for success to try again." "But it is somewhere!" she reflected. "Somewhere, in the Bay!--It's shoal water, for three or four hundred feet around the Point, with a rock bottom. The Point itself has been eaten into by the Bay, down to this rock. Parmenter's chest disappeared with the land in which it was buried, and no man will find it now, except by accident." "It seems such a shame!" she exclaimed. "A fortune gone to waste!" "Without anyone having the fun of wasting it!" laughed Croyden. She took up Parmenter's letter again, and glanced over it. Then she handed it back, and shook her head. "It's too much for my poor brain," she said. "I surrender." "Precisely where we landed. We gave it rather more than a fair trial, and, then, we gave it up. I'm done. When I go home, to-night, I shall return the letter to the escritoire where I found it, and forget it. There is no profit in speculating further." "You can return it to its hiding place," she reflected, "but you can't cease wondering. Why didn't Marmaduke Duval get the treasure while the landmarks were there? Why did he leave it for his heirs?" "Probably on account of old Parmenter's restriction that it be left until the 'extremity of need.'" She nodded, in acquiescence. "Probably," she said, "the Duvals would regard it as a matter of honor to observe the exact terms of the bequest. Alas! Alas! that they did so!" "It's only because they did so, that I got a chance to search!" Croyden laughed. "You mean that, otherwise, there would be no buried treasure!" she exclaimed. "Of course!--how stupid! And with all that money, the Duvals might have gone away from Hampton--might have experienced other conditions. Colonel Duval might never have met your father--you might have never come to Clarendon.--My goodness! Where does it end?" "In the realm of pure conjecture," he answered. "It is idle to theorize on the might-have-beens, or what might-have-happened if the what-did-happen hadn't happened. Dismiss it, at least, for this evening. You asked what I was doing for three weeks at Annapolis, and I have consumed a great while in answering--let us talk of something else. What have you been doing in those three weeks?"