“Nothing. He hoped to take something out; but he was taken sick, and that was the end of his scheme. He had such a hard time getting well, that when he was able to be about again, he made up his mind that he had seen enough of the South, and that he would go home at once and stay there. He wanted to do something for the people who had been so kind to him during his sickness, so he took the man who had done the most for him into his secret, and told him what had brought him there. In the first place he had no partner, no money--only just enough to pay his railroad and steamboat fare to the place where he wanted to go--and no intention of cultivating the plantation. There was money buried somewhere near the house--he wanted it, and this was the way he found out about it: “Attached to the same gunboat to which Mr. Brown belonged was a negro, who had once been Colonel Cisco’s house servant. During the war the colonel’s family hid all their valuables in the ground, just as all our people did who had anything to hide, and this servant helped them bury money and silver, to the amount of thirty thousand dollars and over. After he ran away and got on the gunboat, he told about it, and boasted that when the war closed he would soon make a rich man of himself; but he was taken sick, and this Mr. Brown, who was the doctor’s steward, took care of him. Before he died he told the steward about the buried money, and described the place where it was hidden so accurately that Mr. Brown could have found it in the darkest of nights. That was what made him hire the Cisco plantation.” “Well, did he get the money?” asked David, who was deeply interested. “People think not. If he had found it, he would not have been likely to say anything about it; and besides he would have had more than enough to take him home.” “Didn’t Mrs. Cisco ever say anything about it?” “Yes, and laughed at the man for his pains. Her husband had money once, she said, and buried some of it a dozen different times; but it was dug up again as soon as the danger of losing it had passed, and what they didn’t use was stolen from them by the guerillas. She’s now almost as poor as ourselves, Mrs. Cisco is. Her house was not burned, and in that respect only is she better off than we are.” “We were rich once, were we not, mother?”