He and I talked a good deal at odd times about the money that our great-great-great-uncle the pirate had buried, and that through all these years had stayed buried so persistently. He did not take much interest in the matter personally, but for my sake, and still more for Susan's sake, he was beginning to be quite anxious that the money should be found. He even suggested that we should take Old Jacob over to the bay-side and let him try again to find the _Martha Ann's_ anchorage; but a little talk convinced us that this would be useless. The old man had been given every opportunity, during the two days that we had cruised about with him, to refresh his memory; and we both had been the pained witnesses of the curious psychological fact that the more he refreshed it, the more utterly unmanageable it had become. The prospect, we agreed, was a disheartening one, for it was quite evident that for our purposes Old Jacob was, as it were, but an elderly, broken reed. About this time I noticed that Gregory Wilkinson was unusually silent, and seemed to be thinking a great deal about something. At first we were afraid that he was not quite well, and Susan offered him both her prepared mustard plasters and her headache powders. But he said that he was all right, though he was very much obliged to her. Still, he kept on thinking, and he was so silent and preoccupied that Susan and I were very uncomfortable. To have him around that way, and to be always wondering what he could possibly be thinking about, Susan said, made her feel as though she were trying to eavesdrop when nobody was talking. One afternoon while we were sitting on the veranda--Susan and I trying to keep up some sort of a conversation, and Gregory Wilkinson thinking away as hard as ever he could think--a thin man in a buggy drove down the road and stopped at our hitch-ing-post. When he had hitched his horse he took out from the after-part of the buggy a largo tin vessel standing on light iron legs, and came up to the house with it. He made us all a sort of comprehensive bow, but stopped in front of Susan, set the tin vessel upon its legs, and said: "Madam, you behold before you the most economical device and the greatest labor-saving invention of this extraordinarily devicious and richly inventive age. This article, madam"--and he placed his hand upon the tin vessel affectionately--"is Stowe's patent combination interchangeable churn and wash-boiler." Susan did not say anything; she simply shuddered.