"An' when you come, Dannie, I'll tell you how we're goin' to work it to git them hundred and fifty dollars that Dave's goin' to 'arn by trappin' them birds fur that feller up North. I have a right to it, kase I'm his pap: an' when I get it, I'll give you half--that is, if you do right by me while I'm hidin' here. I'll give you half that bar'l, too, when we find it. Then you kin have your circus hoss an' all your other nice things, can't you?" added Godfrey, playfully poking his son in the ribs. Dan's face relaxed a little, but his father's affected enthusiasm was not as contagious now as it was when the subject of the buried treasure was first brought up for discussion. Godfrey had no intention of renewing his efforts to find the barrel--he could not have been hired to go into that potato-patch after what had happened there--but it was well enough, he thought, to hold it up to Dan as an inducement. Besides, if he could get the boy interested in the matter again, and induce him to prosecute the search, and Dan should, by any accident, stumble upon the barrel, so much the better for himself. The great desire of his life would be attained. He would be rich, and that, too, without work. "Why can't you steal the canoe yourself?" asked Dan. "Kase I've got to pack up an' get ready to leave here; that's why. It'll take me from now till the time you come back to get all my traps together." Dan hurriedly made a mental inventory of the valuables his father possessed and which he had seen in the camp, and the result showed one rifle, one powder-horn and one bullet-pouch. All Godfrey had besides he carried on his back. It certainly would not take him three or four hours to gather these few articles together. "Pap's mighty 'feared that he'll do something he can make somebody else do fur him," thought the boy. "But he needn't think he's goin' to get me into a furse. I ain't agoin' to steal no canoe fur nobody." "An' since it's you," added Godfrey, seeing that Dan did not readily fall in with his plans, "I'll give you a dollar of my hard-'arned money for doin' the job." "Wal, now that sounds like business," exclaimed Dan, brightening up. "Whar's the money, an' how am I goin' to get off'n the island?" "The money's safe, and I'll bring it to you in a minute," replied Godfrey. "You stay here till I come back. As fur gettin' acrosst the bayou, that's easy done. Thar's plenty of drift wood at the upper end of the island, an' you kin get on a log an' pole yourself over. When you get home, Dannie, make friends with Dave the fust thing you do, an' tell him you was only foolin' when you said you was goin' agin him. Help him every way you kin, an' when he gits the money we'll show our hands."