'They are genuine Spanish
crowns. Do you and Janet bring the market-basket, while I go for a
couple of hoes, and let us gather it all up.'
"Well, sure enough, when we came to the place he mentioned, there was
the wheel-track full of dollars. He and I hoed each side of the rut,
which seemed to be in a sort of yellow powder, like the dust of rotten
wood, and got out all we could find. We afterwards tried under the
opposite wheel, and behind and before the rut, but could find no more,
and when we got home we counted it, and found we had eighty-two
pounds, five shillings.
"'Well, this is a God-send, Mary, ain't it?' said brother; and she
threw her arms round his neck, and cried for joy as she kissed him."
"Which way," said I, "show me, Miss, how she did it, only you may
laugh instead of cry if you like."
"Not being a wife," said she, with great quietness, "I cannot show you
myself, but you may imagine it, it will do just as well, or dream it,
and that will do better.
"Well, John was a scrupulous man, and he was determined to restore the
money, if he could find an owner for it; but he could hear of no one
who had lost any, nor any tradition in that place that any one ever
had done so since the first settlement of the country. All that he
could discover was, that about forty years before, an old Frenchman
had lived somewhere thereabouts alone, in the midst of the woods.
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