The “Darby Ring” was merely a circle of some forty feet in diameter, about which the treasure-seekers, in single file, would follow their leader at a dog-trot, reciting some exceedingly silly jargon, and at times pausing to perform such grotesque and childish acts as at a more rational moment would have disgusted them. A part of my childhood was passed on the premises which embraced one of these; and although nearly forty years had then gone by since the feet of the Darbyites had paced its magic round, there were still visible some faint traces of what had been. The earth was a little depressed, and the outer edge of the circle showed something like a ridge. It was in the southeast corner of an orchard; and, no doubt the soft, golden buttercups sprang there in Darby’s time, as they did when we children played about the spot years and years after. The excitement was now at its height. Nothing was thought of among the dancing, prancing treasure-hunters but Kidd, with his black flag and his kegs of broad doubloons. With wild enthusiasm they recited the lines of the old doggerel, wherein he recounts his fortune:— “I had ninety bars of gold, As I sailed, as I sailed; I had ninety bars of gold, As I sailed; I had ninety bars of gold, And dollars manifold, And riches uncontrolled, As I sailed.” At each nightly meeting they were required to carry in their hands sticks of witch-hazel, which were supposed to possess the power of enabling their holders to detect the presence of buried treasure. Thus each devotee had his little rod, carefully cut and trimmed in some deep old swamp, where he had sought it out with a seriousness and intentness of purpose that one smiles to think upon. How they must have looked capering about the ring, each with his stick of witch-hazel!—not boys, but men,—grave, practical old fellows, some of whom had, perhaps, that very afternoon been hoeing corn in their own broad fields, and others taking account of cargoes of molasses and sugar at the village wharves. That there might be no disposition to waver in the ranks, it was Darby’s custom to cheer his retainers with encouraging words; and his smooth and confident tones were as reassuring to them as the “honk” of the leading gander to a flock of wild geese. “Only be true to me,” he would say, “and I will get the money,”—a remark of which they saw the significance a great deal better afterwards than they did at the time. [Illustration: MINES AND MINING BUILDING.] Their case illustrated the homely aphorism that “they who dance must pay the fiddler.”