“Posts!” exclaimed the younger Berridge. “The porch has got posts the size of a big gum tree, a round dozen, too, an’ mighty nigh as high as a gum tree.” He fell to steadily picking his teeth with a fish-bone, and idly riding his chair to and fro.
“What did he say about ‘pillars,’ Mrs. Berridge?” asked the blacksmith, eagerly.
“He talked about a base, an’ a pilaster, an’ columns, an’ a capital.”
“That’s Jackson, capital o’ Miss’ippi, seat of government, second to none in the Union,” explained her husband.
“Sometimes he would call ‘Archie, Archie.’”
“Lieutenant Archibald Ducie as sure as you are born,” said the shanty-boater, solemnly. “He died in Vicksburg, an’ he war the one rumored to have had charge of hidin’ the money.”
“This man never said nothin’ ’bout no money. Jes’ kept on ’bout docyments, an’ a chist,” persisted Mrs. Berridge, incredulously.
“Money mought have been in the chist,” remarked her husband.
“He war specially concerned ’bout a ‘pilaster’--he went back to that ag’in an’ ag’in. He’d whisper, sly an’ secret, ‘in the pilaster.’ What is a pilaster?”
There was no information forthcoming, and she presently resumed, with a drawling voice and a dispirited drooping head. “He seemed to say the docyments was there, though I thought he meant something about a pillow. I wish I had paid mo’ attention, though I had never heard ’bout a pot o’ money bein’ hid at Duciehurst. I wish I could git the chance to hear him talk agin in his sleep.”
“But will he come back?” asked Binnhart, eagerly.
“Sure. He said so when he hired the dugout,” said the old water-rat; “but I made him pay fust, as much as it is wuth--two dollars. He’s got plenty rocks in his pocket.”
“Well, I should think he’d stay the night with the steamboat, a man of his sort,” Binnhart said. He cast a glance of gruff distaste about the squalid and malodorous place, reeking with the greasy smell of fish, and the sullen lamp. He thought of the contrast with the carpeted saloon, the glittering chandeliers, the fine pure air, the propinquity of people of high tone and good social station. Strange! Indeed, it would seem that no man in his senses would resort instead to this den of thieves and cut-throats.
“He’ll come back fast enough,” protested the elder Berridge. “There’s something queer about that man, though he made no secret o’ his name, Captain Hugh Treherne.”