“’Twar mos’ly ’bout Duciehurst, all night, all night. Duciehurst was the word.”
“That sounds like something doing,” Binnhart remarked. “All my life I have heard of hidden money at Duciehurst.”
Jessy Jane ceased to pose. She lifted her head suddenly with the contempt of the uninformed, her lips thickening with a sneer. “Now, what fool would put money in that old ruined shell, instead of a bank?”
“Why, lots of folks, during the war,” explained Binnhart. “The banks were not open then, and people hid their vallybles wherever they could. After the peace some things, here and there, were never found again.”
“Why, shucks, Mrs. Berridge, the name of Duciehurst is famous for hidden treasure, has been ever since I could remember,” the shanter-boater said. “You see, Major Ducie and two of his sons were killed in the war, an’ only one was left, this passenger’s father.” He jerked his thumb toward the bar, where the boat lay so still in the night, amidst its element of surging waters. “This son, being so young at the time, just a child, didn’t know anything about where they had stowed the family silver and jewels, and a power of gold money, they say.”
“The family gave up the search more than forty years ago, and the place was sold to satisfy a mortgage,” Binnhart commented.
“But the river folks take up the search every wunst in a while, an’ go thar and dig around the walls,” said the younger Berridge.
“Sure!” exclaimed the shanty-boater. “I have been thar myself with a git-rich-quick gang.” He leered humorously at the party from behind the stove-pipe. Presently he continued reminiscently:--
“Then pirates tore all the hearths up, mighty nigh, that night. They had a stonemason along, with crowbars and chisels, an’ such like tools. He was a tombstone worker, an’ I reckon his biz queered the job, for we found nothing at all.”
“’Tain’t in a hearthstone,” said the woman, suddenly. “Is there anything about a house named pillow? He kep’ a-talkin’ about a pillow--I thought he meant the one he had his head on.”
Jasper Binnhart started as with a galvanic shock. He suddenly let down the forelegs of his chair and sat stiff and upright.
“Pillar?” he said, in a curiously muffled tone. “Has this mansion of Duciehurst got anything like a porch with posts? I have never seen the river-front of the house.”
