“Sewed by hand, by jinks!” he muttered. But the article had evidently been used merely as protection, or concealment, perhaps, for the box it had contained. He made a long-armed lunge into the depths of the cavity in hopes of further booty, realizing that he was the first intruder into the place after the departure of the refugees from the _Cherokee Rose_, and might make prize of whatever they had possibly overlooked. His heart quickened its beats as his fingers touched straw, but when he dragged forth a bundle holding persistently together he discovered that it was but one of the well-woven, enormous nests of the tiny sparrow, creeping in through a crevice without, and, like some human builders, having a disproportionate idea of suitable housing for its station. He spat a flood of tobacco juice upon the cunning work of the vanished architects, and, with a curse as grotesque as profane, made a circuit of the interior of the cavity in the pillar with his bare palms. Nothing--quite empty. The treasure had lain here for forty years, the fact bruited throughout the traditions of the country. Hundreds, of whom he was one, had made vain search--“and Randal Ducie had found it first go! Some people have _all_ the luck!” He had ventured to the window of the great dining-room last night, after his confederates had fled, and had gazed with gloating eyes on the pile of gold and jewels on the table before Adrian Ducie, whom he mistook for the man familiar to the neighborhood. The sight had maddened him. He had urgently sought to stimulate his confederates to an attack on the place while the money lay undefended, openly on the table. He thought that in the tumult of surprise a rich capture might be effected. “To snatch jes’ a handful would have done me a heap o’ good,” he meditated.