"Well, he was only a pirate for six weeks before he was captured," went on Doris, "but in that time he managed to do a lot, and it was all along the coast of New Jersey here. Now why isn't it quite possible that he sailed in here with his loot and made that nice little cave and buried his treasure, intending to come back some time. He was captured finally down off the coast of the Carolinas, but he might easily have disposed of his booty here before that." Sally was filled with elated certainty. "It surely must have been he!" she cried. "For there was some one,--that's certain, or there wouldn't have been so much talk about buried treasure. And he's the likeliest person to have made that cave." "There's just one drawback that I can see," Doris reminded her. "It was an awfully long time ago,--1718, nearly two hundred years. Do you think it would all have lasted so long? The wood and all, I mean?" "That cedar wood lasts forever," declared Sally. "He probably wrecked some vessel and then took the wood and built this cave with it. Probably he built it because he thought it would be a good place to hide in some time, if they got to chasing him. No one in all the world would ever find him there." "That's a good idea!" commented Doris. "I'd been wondering why a pirate should take such trouble to fix up a place like that. They usually just dug a hole and put in the treasure and then killed one of their own number and buried his body on top of it. I hope to goodness that Mr. Richard Worley didn't do that pleasant little trick! When we find the treasure, we don't want any skeletons mixed up with it." They both laughed heartily over the conceit, and rowed with increased vigor as Slipper Point came in sight. "You said you had an idea about that queer paper we found, too," Sally reminded her. "What was it?" "Oh, I don't know whether it amounts to much, and I'll try to explain it later. The first thing to do is to try to discover, if we can, some idea of a date, or something connected with this cave, so that we can see if we are on the right track. I've been thinking that if that wood was from an old, wrecked vessel, we might perhaps find something on it somewhere that would give us a clue." "That's so," said Sally. "I hadn't thought of that before." With this in mind, they entered the cave, lit the candle, seated Genevieve on the chair with a bag of candy in her lap for solace, and proceeded to their task. "The only way to find anything is just to scrape off all we can of this mold," announced Sally. "You take one side, and I'll take the other and we'll use these sticks. It won't be an easy job." It was not. For over an hour they both dug away, scraping off what they could of the moss and fungus that covered the cedar planks. Doris made so little progress that she finally procured the ancient knife from the table and worked more easily with that implement. Not a vestige nor a trace of any writing was visible anywhere.