"I will tell you a little more about it than you seem to have heard, and what I am going to tell you will lessen me a good deal in your regard, for it will show you that the wind is constant compared to me. It is true I was engaged to someone in London. It is true that while I was engaged I fell in love with Miss Creagh. She would not have me. She accepted my dearest friend, Eugene O'Donnell, and in a moment of absolute madness I tried to take his life. He has forgiven me. We are friends again, and now I have only one great fear. It is that what has occurred may come to the ears of the girl I am engaged to in London, and so prejudice me in her opinion. For, you see, when I proposed to her she had a fortune of five thousand pounds, and now she has lost all that fortune in the terrible crash of Vernon and Son. If she heard of all this, it might make her think--in fact, it would look like it--that I made love to her when she had a fortune, and gave her up as soon as I found it swept away." "So that," said the other anxiously, "if you were up and about once more, and were free to travel, you would go to London, and, if you were in a position to do so, marry Miss Harrington." "That," said Lavirotte eagerly, "is the only thing I could do which would atone to her in any way for my vile fickleness. It would, at the same time, prove to my dear friend, O'Donnell, that I had not only abandoned all my pretensions to Miss Creagh, but that by marrying and going to London I had put a final barrier between myself and her, and gone into voluntary exile as a punishment for my crime. But, you see, as to marrying at present, that is completely out of the question. I was too poor before this affair, and now the whole town will turn against me, and I shall be obliged to leave the place. There will be no getting a crust for me here now." "But," said the old man, enthusiastically, "we must be very near our great fortune now. I work day and night, night and day. By day in the pit, by night on the top of the tower. I cannot be far off now. Another six months and I surely must reach the chests in which the great treasure is hidden." His voice had fallen to a whisper, and the intense excitement with which he contemplated his final triumph had caused the sweat to break out upon his forehead. He grasped the counterpane convulsively. He could scarcely breathe. This was the first time for years he had spoken of the matter. It was the second time in all his life. "You shall be rich," he said. "And I shall be rich. I have tried over and over again to estimate what may be the value of that hoard, and the more I think of it the greater, I am persuaded, it must be. At first I thought two hundred thousand pounds might be the outside limit. But the more I read the more it grew, until at last I have come to the conclusion that it must be somewhere between a million and a million and a half."