After the night when the treasure was found, the three soldiers, to thoroughly satisfy themselves, had cleared away the earth down to the bed-rock. Indeed, the cask itself was evidence enough that the bones of the old man were not below it, for he himself must have buried that. If Josiah had known of its existence, it would certainly have traveled down through the settlement in his two-steer cart, like any other honest cask, and neither cattle nor driver would have ever come back. After taking such a load to market, Josiah would have established himself in luxury in his ignorant way, and probably cut a great splurge in the "low country," with no end of pomp and vulgarity. The three soldiers studied this problem with much care, weighing all the evidence for and against. They even hit upon a plan of determining when the old man came limping through the settlement of Cashiers behind Josiah's cart, covered with dust, and staggering under the weight of his leathern knapsack. They emptied out the little keg of gold on the earthen floor a second time, and began a search for the latest date on the coins. Some were remarkably old and badly worn. A few of the guinea pieces bore the heads of the old Georges and "Dei gratia Rex," and 17-- this and 17-- that, and some of the figures were as smooth as the pate, and as blind as the eyes, of the king on the coin. The newest double-eagles--and there were quite a number of them--bore the date 1833, so it must have been in that year or the year following that the old man without a name had given up the world and become a hermit on the mountain. They decided that he must have had his own ideas about the vanity of riches, and that after doling out his gold, or, more likely, his small silver pieces, with exceeding stinginess to Josiah for the small services rendered him, when he saw his end approaching, he had buried the cask of treasure, and set up the slab above it, trusting to the superstition with which the mountain people regarded the desecration of a grave to protect the gold for all time. It would certainly have protected it from any examination by the soldiers but for the strange behavior of the bear, who had no delicate scruples. The old man had probably told Josiah, with a cunning leer in his eyes, that the empty grave was a blind to deceive any one who might climb to the top of the mountain, as the hunters had done long before, and very likely he had given him a great big silver half-dollar to wink at this little plan. When death did really come at last to claim its own, it was evident that Josiah, faithful to the old man's request, had either taken his remains down the mountain or buried them somewhere on the plateau without mound or slab to reveal the place, and, as likely as not, he had found enough small change in the old miser's pockets to pay him for his trouble.