To Sardelia's surprise the boat dropped anchor just beyond her house and abreast of a strip of woodland near the pond where the horses drank. She saw the persons on board go ashore and enter the woods. After a short while they came out, boarded their boat, headed out of the River and sailed out of sight. Sardelia called her little girl, Florence, and together they hurried through their barn-yard and into the woods. They found the place where the men had come ashore, their footprints on the sand, broken bushes and bruised foliage in the woods, but they could find no clue to the mysterious mission. Sardelia finally gave up her search and sat down under the big water oak tree there in the woods to ponder what she had seen. Nearly four years later, after the close of the war, Sardelia again saw almost an exact re-enactment of the same scene she had witnessed before. The same boat came into the River, stopped at the same place and the persons on board went ashore and disappeared into the woods. After a short while they boarded their boat and sailed away--for the last time, so far as Sardelia ever knew. Sardelia again hastened to the woods. This time her search was not in vain. About forty feet back from the shore amidst the trees she found a newly dug hole. It had been hastily and loosely refilled with earth. This called for more than one period of meditation under the water oak tree. Who were they? Why did they select this particular spot to bury whatever they had buried? (The island at the mouth of the River would have been a perfect setting for buried treasure.) Why did they come into an inhabited area--almost in the barn-yard? Were they evading Federal gunboats? Or, perhaps they were from the North themselves. Did they come from one of the islands in the Chesapeake? And what did they bury? Tales of buried treasure circulated around Little Wicomico for a long time, although many who lived close by never knew how it all started. The woods became haunted, too, especially the big water oak. But the haunts must not have been too bad because Uncle Zeke, a respected colored man, lived peacefully for many years in his little house in the woods by Horse Pond. _SCHOONER IN A MILL-POND_ On November 18, 1863, Abraham Lincoln passed through Baltimore on his way to dedicate a battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg. At least one Virginian, happened to be in the city on that same day also. Captain Jehu, who hailed from the lower Northern Neck, was in Baltimore on business. His schooner, _Pioneer_, lay at a city dock, unloaded of her cargo of wood and ready for the return trip home, but the Captain was having difficulty in getting his money for the wood.