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had gathered during his long exile, then also seating himself, he said:

"My nephew Nicholas confided to me last night a matter I take to be well understood by all present. It concerns chiefly himself and a certain young lady, who is not far away." He looked toward Edith Gale, who blushed and smiled, but said nothing. Nicholas told me further," my uncle continued, "of his lack of fortune, and his unwillingness to hold her to a promise made with different prospects ahead."

66

At this point Chauncey Gale started to speak, but my Uncle Nicholas checked him. I did not look at Edith, but she told me afterwards how she felt, and I sympathized with her. My uncle proceeded.

"I told my nephew that money was not all of life. That he would give to the world a treasure of information, and that love was still greater than either knowledge or riches."

I began to grow uncomfortable. Also, less glad than I had been that we had discovered my uncle. True, he had not talked to anybody for so long that he was doubtless anxious to make up for lost time, but I wished he had selected some other subject. We waited the end in silence.

"He would have been my heir," he went on, "had my ship come into port. He is my heir today of whatever of property or prospect I may leave

behind.

Of prospect I believe there is considerable on this island. Of property-well, as I told Nick, I have had a good deal of time on my hands during the past twenty-one years, and the result "-turning, he laid his hand on a great flat stone in the wall near him, and swung it aside-" it is in there you can see it for yourselves."

We leaned forward and looked into the opening made. Beyond, there was a sort of storehouse or small room, the floor smoothly covered with skins. In the center arose a heap or pyramid of what appeared to be irregular yellow lumps of earth, or pebbles, of varying sizes-some very small-others quite large. No one spoke, but we looked at him questioningly.

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"Those are nuggets," he said. That pile contains, I believe, about two tons of solid gold!"

2

XL.

CLAIMING THE REWARD.

For three weeks the Billowcrest lay a prisoner off the South Shetlands-just which of these islands, I do not consider it proper at this time to say. Assisted by Chauncey and Edith Gale, my uncle and I put the treasure into bags and had it conveyed to the vessel as “mineral specimens,” for we felt that we could not wholly trust our crew. Then at length a wind from the northwest set the currents a new pace and altered the sand drift. We found ourselves afloat one morning, and crowding on sail and steam made all speed northward, arriving safely in New York harbor on the evening of February second, after an absence of nearly eighteen months.

As we came in through the dusk, the splendid cities and the bridge between to us seemed gloriously illuminated; but if so, it was not in our honor. Nobody knew that we had returned, or even that we had gone.

We steamed up North River to our old dock, and Chauncey Gale set forth at once to catch a Broad

way car for a certain down-town theater, which he greatly feared had been discontinued during our absence. Next morning I went with my uncle to establish some desirable banking connections, through which his treasure might be properly transferred, and converted into funds.

As to when and in what manner we should make our adventures, and the results of the expedition, public property, we were at first undecided. Newspaper notoriety was not a pleasant prospect, particularly as we were already contemplating a second voyage to the South. We therefore concluded to say nothing immediately, and meanwhile to have the old Billowcrest thoroughly overhauled and outfitted for the voyage to be undertaken in the late summer-not to the South Pole this time, but to the South Shetlands, to develop in the spot of his exile the mines which my uncle believes to be almost inexhaustible.

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And so to use the so-called Irish form-we have continued to say nothing" through the spring and summer, during which period I have prepared the matter already in the proper hands for publication.

We are about to sail again now, and by the time my report is given to the reader I shall be beyond the reach of either approval or condemnation—far on my way to our new Treasure Island" of the South, where the rarest treasure will be one who

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joins in this, our unique honeymoon-she who was Edith Gale.

For I claimed my reward this morning-two years from the day when she jestingly agreed that I should name my price for a new world-and in the little forward cabin of the Billowcrest where the agreement was made.

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"It was hardly fair," she whispered, just before the ceremony. "I am paying to the full, while you, though you found the world, could not deliver it into my hands."

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