"Better row round to the west'ard a little, when you get to Fishback," said he, "it's kinder choppy on this side sometimes, an' if my boat got all stove to pieces on the rocks 'fore you got ashore, why, where'd I be?" "You would be right here," said Mr. Daddles; "where do you think we'd be?" "You? Oh, huh! Yes, that's so. Well, p'r'aps you might as well give me the fifteen cents now, if it's all the same to you." "It's exactly the same to me," replied our friend. And he handed over the money. The man looked at it carefully, and then went back to his home. "What do you suppose he's going to do with that money?" I wondered. "I know," said Jimmy Toppan, "he's going to hurry off and put it in the bank, before Ike Flanders tries to get it away from him." "No," said Mr. Daddles, "he's going to bury it in his garden." "First," remarked Ed Mason, "he'll take it into the house and test it with acid, to see if it's genuine." "He thinks we're a gang of bunco men," Mr. Daddles reflected. "I wonder why he trusts us with his boat." "He knows that no one would be foolish enough to steal it," said Jimmy; "look at it!" It was a shabby and ill-kept dory, dirty, and with half an inch of dirty water washing about in it. But we didn't care. Almost any boat is good enough when you are looking for buried treasure. We set out, with Mr. Daddles and Jimmy rowing. A breeze had sprung up and the bay was a little choppy, so we splashed and bumped along at no great speed. Mr. Daddles did not pay much attention to the management of his long oar, but got into a discussion with Jimmy about what they would buy with their share of the treasure. Jimmy said his first choice would be a sailing yacht. Next, after that, he thought he should buy a steam-yacht. Mr. Daddles said he should buy a piano. "A piano! That's funny. What would you buy next?" "A stick of dynamite." "Dynamite! What for?" "To blow up the piano." "Why do you want to do that?" "Well, you see the piano I'm going to buy belongs to a girl who lives next door to me at home. She practises on it all day long. Sometimes I get so I almost wish that she didn't have a piano at all." Ed Mason voted for a horse, and I for a bicycle. "I don't see how we can dig up much treasure, anyway," was Ed Mason's comment, "not even if we find where it's buried." "Why not?" "What have we got to dig with?" That was true,--we had forgotten to bring shovels. "Never mind, this is only prospecting," Mr. Daddles reminded us. "We'll look around, and if we see any place that looks treasury, we'll come back another time." We rowed around to the westerly side of Fishback Island, as the car-driver had suggested, and landed in a little pebbly cove. Mr. Daddles was delighted with the appearance of the island. "I don't wonder they came here for treasure," said he. "It's the most likely looking place for a pirate's lair I ever saw in my life. Look at that tree on the hill,--a regular landmark. And look at the smuggler's cave!"