“I am sure I don’t know,” was his mother’s answer, “and for the sake of all concerned I hope it is not. It is true that all the gold and silver, and other valuables belonging to the Gordon family, were buried on the night the levee was cut, and it is equally true that Jordan buried some of it. He went down the Pass with the gunboats when they left, and has never been seen or heard of since. What has become of him, nobody knows; and whether he went without telling Mrs. Gordon where he had hidden the valuables, is a question that no one outside the general’s family is able to answer. It may be possible that he did, for such things have happened.” “When and where?” asked David. “Right here in this neighborhood. After the war was over, and the soldiers began to return, there came to this landing a man named Brown, who had been a sailor on one of the Union gunboats. He did not look like a person who had more money than he wanted, but he said he had, and that his object in coming here was to rent a plantation and go to raising cotton. As almost everybody was ready to sell or rent, several plantations were offered him, but the only one he would look at was Colonel Cisco’s--an old worn-out place that no one else would have as a gift. The widow--the colonel was killed in the army, you know--was glad to get the hundred dollars Mr. Brown offered her to bind the bargain, and let him have the place at once. He said he could do nothing until his partner came from Memphis with the mules, provisions and other things needed to carry on plantations; but he took possession of the house, and lived there two months all by himself. He was never seen during the daytime. He visited none of the neighbors, and didn’t seem to want to have anybody call on him; but people went all the same, and one day somebody found out that the flower-beds in the back yard, on which Mrs. Cisco had spent so much time, had all been dug up, and that there was a hole there that one could bury a house in. The man didn’t like it at all because it had been found out, and said he was digging a cellar. It was discovered afterward, however, that all this work had been done in the night, and that Mr. Brown never thought of putting a cellar there.” “What did he intend to put there then?” asked David, when his mother paused.