There was no information forthcoming, and she presently resumed, with a drawling voice and a dispirited drooping head. “He seemed to say the docyments was there, though I thought he meant something about a pillow. I wish I had paid mo’ attention, though I had never heard ’bout a pot o’ money bein’ hid at Duciehurst. I wish I could git the chance to hear him talk agin in his sleep.” “But will he come back?” asked Binnhart, eagerly. “Sure. He said so when he hired the dugout,” said the old water-rat; “but I made him pay fust, as much as it is wuth--two dollars. He’s got plenty rocks in his pocket.” “Well, I should think he’d stay the night with the steamboat, a man of his sort,” Binnhart said. He cast a glance of gruff distaste about the squalid and malodorous place, reeking with the greasy smell of fish, and the sullen lamp. He thought of the contrast with the carpeted saloon, the glittering chandeliers, the fine pure air, the propinquity of people of high tone and good social station. Strange! Indeed, it would seem that no man in his senses would resort instead to this den of thieves and cut-throats. “He’ll come back fast enough,” protested the elder Berridge. “There’s something queer about that man, though he made no secret o’ his name, Captain Hugh Treherne.” “There’ll be something mighty queer about me if I don’t git a-holt of some of them rocks in his pockets ye war tellin’ about,” declared the shanty-boater. “What ailed him to take out for the steamer?” demanded Binnhart. “He seemed all struck of a heap when he seen old Cunnel Kenwynton through the spy-glass. He claims he knows the old Cunnel,” replied the water-rat. “And yet he is coming back here,” exclaimed Binnhart, incredulously. “I wish I could have heard him talk.” He rose, still with that intent and baffled look, and went to the door staring out into the gloomy night to descry, if he might, the course of the little craft on the face of the waters and its progress; to canvass the object of the man who wielded the paddle and the nature of the business he could have with old Colonel Kenwynton; and to speculate in futile desperation as to the knowledge he might possess of the storied treasure of Duciehurst, and how this secret might be wrested from him. CHAPTER III