Happily the wind had risen, and the sound of his preparations were unheard. That Cameron was nervous and anxious to be done one could have told by his frenzied haste. First he walked upstream for fifty yards with a bag upon his shoulders. Then he slid a large boulder across the waterfall to divert the current, and dropped his burden under the bed of the stream, where the open barrel was ready to receive them. Then he returned, never putting foot upon dry land, and so, with an aching back and bleeding fingers, he toiled on until at last the barrel was full and the lid on, and the stone rolled back so that the water rushed over the spot under which the treasure lay. The digging of a hole for the casks down the stream then commenced, and that ready, Cameron set off towards the mouth of the burn in the opposite direction from where the first portion of the gold lay buried; and still wading in the current, he began to approach the shore. About a score of yards from the loch a great rock rose by the side of the burn, and some six feet above it a single branch of a tree swayed stiffly in the night breeze, extending in a straight line from the trunk, for near the shore the hill-side was woody and thick with undergrowth. Now the hardest part of the work began. He first of all slipped a piece of rope through the loop of the remaining bags holding the end of it in his hand. For a moment he rested, then leaping upon the rock, he crouched an instant, and sprang straight for the thick branch above him. Grasping it tightly, he swung himself cross-legged upon it, and leaning over began to haul the bags up beside him, slinging the rope securely about the tree. Having detached the first bag, he conveyed it along the branch, and, smoothing aside the leaves, there was revealed a hole in the trunk of the tree about the size of a saucer, into which he squeezed it. This he did many times, until the contents of the second half of the casks were inside the hollow trunk, and then rearranging the leaves, he took a bird's nest very gravely from inside his hat, and laying it over the hole, slipped a couple of eggs from a little bag round his neck inside it, and let himself down again upon the rock. Then burying the casks as he had planned, and that but carelessly, so that the top of one of them even stuck a little through the turf, he threw a few gold pieces upon the ground. The work was finished. Stealing back, he gave a low call to Rob, who, waiting a moment, slipped back to his side. Cameron without a word slipped on the great-coat and his wig again, and patting Rob upon the shoulder, led him down upon the beach, where the bright moonlight made the loch gleam like beaten silver. The spade he had concealed in a secret place.