134 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
“Tt only shows,”’ he explained, “what thoughtful 
chaps pirates have become. They knew you could n’t 
use a bag of doubloons nowadays, but that sweet 
chocolate always comes in handy.” 
Hidden treasure is not a thing to be investigated 
scientifically, nor can anything restore a glamour 
once gone. Perhaps so unconsciously reasoned the 
Band as they followed the Captain down the steep 
stairs and the steeper ladder. Through the lilac 
bushes he led them around to the far side of the 
House. There the stairway had disappeared, and 
most of the sagging floor-beams were broken. A 
limb of a nearby apple tree had thrust its way above 
the lilac thicket, until it nearly touched the ledge of 
a window half hidden by the boughs. 
Up the apple tree the Captain clambered, followed 
by the Band, and walking out on the limb, led the 
way across the window-ledge into a tiny room. 
For some unknown reason, amid the general wreckage 
and ruin of the House, this room still stood untouched 
and with its flooring unbroken. Even the walls, 
plastered a deep blue, showed scarcely a crack on 
their surface. Best of all, fronting the open dormer 
of the window, was a long, deep settee, with curly, 
carved legs and a bent, comfortable back. Its seat 
was so wide that the Corporal’s legs stuck out straight 
in front of her when she sat down with the rest of 
the Band at the end of the line. 
Framed in the broken sheathing and bleached 
stone of the window-opening, there stretched out 
before them a vista of little valleys and round 
