"Come on, then," said the boy. "I'm going to ask him for them."

The Student took the interruption good-humoredly.

"I am in the second century," he said. "Doubloons have not yet been coined. As to these doubloons, I am quite sure they are not there, wherever 'there' may be; but if they are there, I have no objection to the Urchin fighting the Government for them. Urchin, would you like a deed?"

And, to the delight of the Urchin, the Student proceeded to make out a document, which called on all men to know that the said Student thereby assigned to the said Urchin all the estate, right, title, and interest, if any, of the said Student in and to a certain treasure of doubloons or other coins once carried in the galleon called Our Lady of the Holy Cross were the same a little more or less ("all good deeds get that in somewhere," said the Student) to hold to the said Urchin and his heirs ("but I don't suppose the heirs will see much of it") to the intent that he might become a wiser and a better Urchin and not interrupt the said Student any more when he wanted to work. This being done, the Student signed his name at the end, made a beautiful blot of hot red sealing wax and put his signet ring on it, and made Fiona sign her name as witness ("which is probably not legal," he explained cheerfully); then he handed over the deed to the rejoicing Urchin, with the remark that it was quite as good as many lawyers' deeds, and drove the pair of them out of the bookroom.

"Good," said the Urchin. "Now I've a treasure just the same as you."

"If we find them," said Fiona.

"Well, let's go and start hunting for them at any rate," said the boy.

"Pardon me," said the shore lark, "if I interrupt; but you might be the better of a few hints."

Fiona dropped on her knees and took the little bird in her hands again.

"So you can talk," she said. "That's jolly. You've a first-rate chance of returning good for evil, and making us feel worms."

"Don't talk of worms," said the shore lark, "you have entirely omitted to provide me with any. Send him to get some, and I'll tell you something. He can't understand what I'm saying, anyhow."

"Urchin," said the girl, "he's asking for worms. Go and get him some."

"One would think you and he could talk to each other," said the boy. "Silly, I call it, going on like that. I suppose that's what girls do."

"Urchin," said Fiona, "when you and I have a row, what happens?"

"You happen," said the Urchin. "You've three years' pull; 'tisn't fair; just like a girl, to go and have three years' pull of a chap."

"Stop grousing," said the girl, "and get me the worms, there's a dear little boy."

The Urchin flung the nearest book at her, missed as usual, and, having thus made his honor white, departed, declaring in simpler language that the love of worms was the root of all evil.

"I can't tell you much," said the shore lark, "but one sometimes picks up things, hopping about, and I heard you say treasure. If you mean the Venetian ship, don't start without consulting the finner. He is very old, and I believe that he knows everything that happens in this loch."

"I don't really mean that," said Fiona. "That's half a jest. I mean my own search, the search for the treasure of the Isle of Mist."

"We have all heard of it," said the shore lark, "and we all know that you cannot find it by looking for it. All I can tell you is this: the curlews have a tradition that the last man who found it went up a hill. That is what they tell each other when they call in the spring; and I believe they know."

"They are like the spirits of the hills themselves," said Fiona. "Tell me why it is I can understand you."

"I have no idea," said the shore lark. "I am only a little bird, and I don't know very much. I chanced speaking to you because I wanted worms."

The girl slipped across into the bookroom.

"Daddy," she said, "come back out of the second century, and tell me why I can understand the shore lark."

The Student looked up with a patient smile in far-away eyes.

"It isn't time to come back yet," he said. "And I have not fully grasped your meaning. You appear to refer to some conversation with some bird. There are precedents, of course. For instance, the philosopher Empedocles, having been a bird himself in a former life, remembered their speech; he ended by leaping into Ætna. Siegfried also, having bathed in the blood of Fafnir, followed the voice of a bird of the wood; he ended by losing his love and his life. There was once a sailor who took the advice of a parrot, and was hanged. Birds are light-minded, as the poet Aristophanes discovered; and it would seem that little good comes of talking to them."

"My shore lark is a darling," said Fiona. "And I don't intend to be hanged."

"That," said the Student, "is as Providence pleases. One never knows, as my poor ancestor said when he fell into a bear-trap and found the bear there before him."

"O daddy," said the girl, "did he really? And what happened?"

"This ancestor of mine," said the Student, "was a very strong man. If he had not been, someone else would have killed him first, and he would not have been my ancestor; the other man would have been someone else's ancestor, so to speak. Being a very strong man, he naturally killed the bear. He must have, or he would not have lived to be my ancestor. In those days everyone lived in caves, and he lived in a cave too; and he always killed the other man, sometimes fairly, sometimes, I regret to say, otherwise. He courted my ancestress by knocking her down from behind with the blunt end of a stone ax, a method which I do not defend; but when her senses returned she told him he had acted like a man, and they became a most devoted couple. This was partly due, no doubt, to the fact that he never saw the meaning of the things she said; she took good care that he shouldn't, for though slow of wit he was handy with his ax. Their life I think must have been very happy till one day he found a red stone which he could heat and shape with his ax, and he hammered out that copper bracelet you're wearing; and then came the deluge, for metal meant magic then, as you know. Next day my ancestress found him conversing with the local vulture; within a week he was giving exhibitions in the other caves with the vulture's assistance; in a month he had become the tribal god; and about two years after, owing to the persistent failure of some of his magic to come off, he was, for a brief moment, the tribal banquet. Now you know what comes of talking to shore larks."

"Daddy," she said, "you can't know if that's true or not, can you?"

"It may not all be what you call true," said the Student, "but it's true in quite a lot of ways. It's true psychologically, and anthropologically, and palæethnologically; and that does to start with. And I certainly had ancestors. And there is a bracelet. And you were talking strange words about a shore lark. And you must really take care, my dear daughter; for you ought now to become a tribal priestess, and be hurled from a high place into the sea the first season that the herring fail."

CHAPTER III
THE HAUNTED CAVE

A sunlit sheet of sea, violet and azure, clothed in slender cloud shadows and heaving gently to the long Atlantic ground-swell. Up through the calm water, to meet the eye of the gazer, came the green