VI 

 HIDDEN TREASURE 



It cost me an appendix to become a treasure- 

 hunter, but it was worth the price. I really had very 

 little use for that appendix anyway, while my mem- 

 bership in the Order of Treasure-Hunters has brought 

 me in several million dollars' worth of health and 

 happiness. 



It all began when I was sent from a city hospital 

 to an old farmhouse in the northwestern corner of 

 Connecticut, with instructions to avoid all but the 

 most ladylike kind of exercise. Accordingly one 

 morning I found myself tottering feebly along a 

 wood-road that led over Pond Hill, highly resolved 

 to walk to Hen's Pine and back. This was the lone 

 tree which stood on the crest of the wooded hill 

 which, half a century ago, old Hen, a freed slave, 

 had begged from the charcoal-burners when they 

 coaled that region. Hen's old horse, Bill, is buried 

 at its foot, and Hen had hoped to lie there himself 

 with his axe, his fiddle, and his whip. Instead, he 

 sleeps in a little graveyard on a bare hill beside his 

 old master. 



My path had just crossed a round green circle in 

 the woods where an old charcoal-pit had set its seal 

 forever. Suddenly a brown bird flew up from beside 

 the road a few yards ahead of me. If she had kept 



