then stood up so handsomely to ask for more that they rolled him raw ones until his hunger was satisfied, after which he waddled through the open door, and lay down for another nap in his old place by the fire, just as if he had gone out but yesterday, which was probably just what he thought he had done.

By this time the last page of the station journal had been used, and Lieutenant Coleman had added to it the five fly-leaves of the precious Blue Book, which he had cut out neatly with his knife. Paper was so scarce at last that on this March 16, which was the day the bear woke up, the circumstance of the avalanche alone was recorded, and that was entered after the date in the most wonderfully small and cramped letters you can imagine. Now, Philip was of the opinion that the return of the bear was of quite as much importance as the falling of the ice. It happened that he had in his breast-pocket a letter which had been written to him by his uncle. It was postmarked, "Piqua, Ohio," and addressed, "Philip Welton, Co. C, 2d Ohio Infy., Camp near Resaca, Ga." Philip had been looking over Coleman's shoulder as he made the cramped entry in the diary.

"Now look here," said he, taking up the quill as it was laid down. "If you don't choose to make a record of the bear, I will." So taking from his pocket the letter, he wrote across the top of the envelope:

WHITESIDE MOUNTAIN, March 16, 1865. "Tumbler," the bear, woke up to-day. Signed,

PHILIP WELTON,
GEORGE BROMLEY,
FREDERICK HENRY COLEMAN.

"Well," said Coleman, "what are you going to do with that? Drop it over into the Cove?" "Not a bit of it," said Philip. "I am just going to keep the record out of respect to the bear"; and with that, as it happened, he put the envelope back in one pocket and the letter in another. But a few weeks later, when the snow had quite gone and the buds were beginning to swell on the trees, Philip was chopping on the hill where the boulder side of the mountain joined the cliff above the spring; and as he grew warm with his work he cast off his cavalry

jacket, and it happened in some way that the envelope on which he had written fell out into the grass. Philip did not notice this loss at the time, and it was a week before he missed the envelope. He kept his loss to himself at first; but as he became alarmed lest it should blow over into the Cove and disclose their hidingplace, he confessed to Lieutenant Coleman what had happened.

The three soldiers searched everywhere for this dangerous paper, except in the snug place under the tuft of grass where it lay. It was suspected that Philip was repenting of the agreement he had made to remain on the mountain, and both Coleman and Bromley lectured him roundly for his carelessness. While Philip was still chafing under the suspicions of his comrades, all the more that he was conscious of his perfect loyalty to the old flag and to the compact they had made together for its sake, the bear was growing stronger every day and more mischievous. Although he had the whole plateau to roam over, nothing seemed to please Tumbler so much as to nose about and dig into the grave of the Old Man of the Mountain. He was such a wicked bear that the more they kicked and cuffed him away, the more stubbornly he came back to his unholy work; and then it appeared that the light soil of the mound had been taken possession of by a colony of ants. It was a temptation such as no hungry bear could resist, and the sacrilege was so offensive to the three soldiers that they resolved to remove the last remnant of the ant-hill and fill it in with clay in which no insect could live. It was after supper when they came to this resolution, and they fell to work at once with the wooden spade and a piece of tent-cloth, in which Philip carried the dirt a stone's-throw away and piled it into a new mound. The bear seemed to think this was all for his benefit, and while the work went merrily on he rooted into the new heap and wagged his stumpy tail with every evidence of gratitude and satisfaction.

It was a sufficiently disagreeable task for Coleman and Bromley, whose legs and bodies were bitten by the ants until they danced with pain. At the same time the little pests went up Philip's sleeves and came out on his neck.

down into the

shining mass

of gold coin. All hustled and pushed one another at the opening. Philip was on the point of striking out right

and left in

sheer excitement; and in their scramble the cask was overturned so that the yellow pieces poured

out

upon the pine

floor and the

hearth, and

some flopped into the fire, while others roll

ed here and there

The three soldiers hugged one another with delight.

"We are rich!" cried Philip.

"Let's count our treasure," said Coleman. "The double-eagles first-fifty to a thousand." Forgotten was the Old Man of the Mountain; forgotten were

weariness and the lateness of the hour, as they eagerly

fell a-counting.

They piled the shining yellow columns on the mantelpiece; and when that was full, without stopping to count the thousands, they began bunches of piles on the hard floor.

into the dark corners of the room. The golden guineas which first appeared were now covered with gold double-eagles, and it was discovered, when the top ones were removed, that there were silver coins of much variety beneath them.

VOL. XXIV.-72.

They could hardly believe that such a treasure had fallen to their possession. In their

light they utterly forgot the old flag of the thirty-five

stars and the total defeat of the Union ar

mies, as they toiled and counted.

Philip was the first to yield to the mandate of

tired nature. With his hands full of gold, he

sank down on his bunk and fell asleep. Lieutenant Coleman was the next; and as the cock began to crow at earliest dawn, Bromley bolted the door for the first time since the

The treasure was found, as shown by the diary, on Friday, April 14, in the year 1865, on the very night of the murder of the good President whom the three soldiers believed to be living somewhere, a monument of failure and incapacity

The entry was in a few brief words, and by the Sunday which followed, Lieutenant Coleman would not have exchanged the four blank leaves of the diary for the whole treasure they had dug up. After the first excitement of their discovery they began to realize that the yellow stamped pieces were of no value except as a medium of exchange, and that as there was nothing on the mountain for which to exchange them, they were of no value at all. If they had found a saucepan or a sack of coffee in the cask, they would have had some reason to rejoice.

So it fell out that within a week's time the gold was looked upon as so much lumber, and the cask which held it was kicked into a dark corner, neglected and despised. Some of the coins were even trodden under foot, and others lay among the chips at the door.

On the evening of the second Sunday after the discovery of the gold, they sat together outside the door of the house, and tried to think of some likely thing the cask might have held more useless than the guineas and doubleeagles; and, hard as they tried, they could name nothing more worthless. The result was that they turned away to their beds, feeling poor and dissatisfied, and down on their luck.

grew stronger, whirled it from its snug hidingplace, and tumbled it over and over among the dry chestnut-burs and the old, gray, dead limbs.

If the envelope came to a rest, this wind was never content to leave its plaything alone for long. When it landed the little paper against a stump and held it fluttering there until that particular gust was out of breath, the envelope fell to the ground of its own weight, only to be picked up again and tossed on, little by little, always in the same direction, until at last it lay exposed on the brow of the hill to a braver and stronger blast, which lifted it high into the air and sent it sailing over the roof of the house.

This envelope, with the names of the three soldiers and their hiding-place written out in a fair, round hand, might have sailed along on the northwest wind until it fell at the door of the post-office in the Cove but for the queer way it had of navigating the air. It would turn over and over on its way, or shoot up or dart to one side, or take some unexpected course; and so just as it was sailing smoothly above the house, its sharp edge turned in the wind, and with a backward dive it struck hard on the rock below Philip's leach. Just a breath of wind turned it over and over on the stone, until it fell noiselessly into the pool of lye.

Now, Lieutenant Coleman chanced to come out first in the morning; and when he saw the lost envelope floating on the dark-brown pool alongside a hen's egg, which had been placed there to test the strength of the liquid, he was glad it had blown no further. The paper had turned very yellow in the strong potash, and so he fished it out with a twig, and carried it across to the branch by the Slow-John, and dipped it into the water. When he picked it out it was still slimy to the touch, and the letters had faded a little. He brushed a word with his finger, and the letters dissolved under his eyes.

CHAPTER XI.

HOW THE BEAR DISTINGUISHED HIMSELF.

If the Old Man of the Mountain was not in his grave, where was he? He had certainly not gone back to the world and left the buried treasure behind him. If the grave had been empty, the soldiers might have suspected foul play. Josiah Woodring, who had been his agent and provider, had already been five years in his own grave at the time they had arrived on the mountain. As long as they believed that the bones of the old man were quietly at rest under the oak slab in the garden spot, the condition of the hut, neglected and going to decay, was sufficient evidence that he had died there, and that no one had occupied it for more than five years before. With almost his last breath Josiah had announced his death to the doctor from the settlement; and under such solemn circumstances it was impossible to believe that he had stated anything but the truth. He had not mentioned, it is true, the precise time when the old man died.

After the night when the treasure was found, the three soldiers, to thoroughly satisfy themselves, had cleared away the earth down to the bedrock. Indeed, the cask itself was evidence enough that the bones of the old man were not below it, for he himself must have buried that. If Josiah had known of its existence, it would certainly have traveled down through the settlement in his two-steer cart, like any other honest cask, and neither cattle nor driver would have ever come back. After taking such a load to market, Josiah would have established himself in luxury in his ignorant way, and probably cut a great splurge in the country roundabout, with no end of pomp and vulgarity.

The three soldiers studied this problem with much care, weighing all the evidence for and against. They even hit upon a plan of determining when the old man came limping through the settlement of Cashiers behind Josiah's cart, covered with dust, and staggering under the weight of his leathern knapsack. They emptied out the little keg of gold on the earthen floor a second time, and began a search for the latest date on the coins. Some were remarkably old and badly worn. A few of the guinea pieces

bore the heads of the old Georges and "Dei gratia Rex," and 17— this and 17— that, and some of the figures were as smooth as the pate, and as blind as the eyes, of the king on the coin. The newest double-eagles — and there were quite a number of them - bore the date 1833, so it must have been in that year or the year following that the old man without a name had given up the world, and become a hermit on the mountain.

They decided that he must have had his own ideas about the vanity of riches, and that after doling out his gold, or, more likely, his small silver pieces, with exceeding stinginess to Josiah for the small services rendered him, when he saw his end approaching, he had buried the cask of treasure, and set up the slab above it, trusting to the superstition with which the mountain people regarded the desecration of a grave to protect the gold for all time. It would certainly have protected it from any examination by the soldiers but for the strange behavior of the bear, who had no delicate scruples. The old man had probably told Josiah, with a cunning leer in his eyes, that the empty grave was a blind to deceive any one who might climb to the top of the mountain, as the hunters had done long before, and very likely he had given him a great big silver halfdollar to wink at this little plan. When death did really come at last to claim its own, it was evident that Josiah, faithful to the old man's request, had either taken his remains down the mountain or buried them somewhere on the plateau without mound or slab to reveal the place, and, as likely as not, he had found enough small change in the old man's pockets to pay him for his trouble.

Thus the mystery of the Old Man of the Mountain was settled by the three soldiers, after much discussion, and the cask of gold was trundled back into the dark corner of the house, where they threw their waste, and such guineas and double-eagles as had joggled out upon the floor were kicked after it.

Directly after the lost envelope had turned up in the pool of lye, Lieutenant Coleman had made his arrangements for the manufacture of blank paper for the diary. The Blue Book was his personal property; but before commencing