of Jamaica, who had a house not far from this place. That was the owner of this field and his family holds it yet. We are descendants of old family servants of that Governor. Well, sar, the letter came one day and the Governor began to brag about finding great treasure soon; one of my race who was his body-servant thought the letter must tell about the treasure and so he stole it. But he became disgusted and buried the despatch box. I do not know why. At least, I did not know why until I dug it up last night!”

They were all tense with suspense as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded paper. Holding his hands around it until he made sure that it was the right one, his eyes rolling with the colored race’s love for being the center of interest, he slowly opened the paper, holding it down low so that they could all see the surface.

It was dirty and brown with age and the ink on it was faint and faded to a faint brownish tint.

They all craned their necks.

What they saw was disappointing, as Sam had said. There were three small, irregular shaped circles toward the top of the paper, in such relation to one another that if a line had been drawn between each pair so as to connect them, they would have been at the points of a triangle.

At one side, and a little lower down, was the regulation, old-fashioned representation of a compass to show direction.

Further down, there was part of a word which they made out to be “per.” Still further down, was a mass of tiny dots and marks, too faint to be given any meaning, they were not in the form of letters, but were just like the blotches that break out on the skin during measles-here, there and everywhere. But at the left side they went right to the edge of the paper, and there was a very dim line starting there and running a little way in among the blotches.

Just beneath was a nautical bearing: “25—30—13 N.”

“You can see,” said Sam, his finger running along the left hand edge, “this paper is torn off. It is only half of a cipher, sar.”

Mr. Neale, Cliff and Tom nodded.

“So it is of no good.” said Sam, but he returned it to his pocket. “It may come that the other half will be found. I hope so.”

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