HEY reached the cabin. Old O'Flaherty fumbled at the latch and opened the door. Inside, the place was almost quite dark. A few sparks glowed faintly on the hearth. The small square window looked like a grey patch on the black wall. Meldon paused at the threshold, unwilling to advance without light towards unknown furniture, over a pitted and hilly earthen floor. O'Flaherty disappeared into a corner and could be heard breaking sticks. The fragments were flung on the hearth. The old man went down on his knees and blew the embers.
"I have the end of a candle on the dresser beyond," he said, "if I could come by as much fire as would light it."
"If that's what you're after," said Meldon, "I have a box of matches in my pocket."
He drew out the box and struck one. O'Flaherty pounced on his candle, lit it, and set it on the stone seat which filled an angle of the wide hearth.
"Let you give me a hand now, and we'll shift the dresser," he said. "I could do it myself, but it'll be done quicker if you take the near end of it."
Meldon caught hold of the dresser and pulled it over to the far side of the room. O'Flaherty stood on a wooden stool and took down a shovel which rested among the rafters of the roof. He scooped away loose earth from the place where the dresser had stood. At the depth of about an inch he came upon a number of boards laid close together. He prized up one of them with the edge of the shovel and lifted the others out. A hole lay open. Meldon peered into it but could see nothing. He fumbled for his matches. O'Flaherty fetched the candle from the stone seat in the hearth. He lay flat and, stretching his hand into the hole, held the candle far down. Meldon saw piles of coins standing in neat rows. He, too, lay down on the floor, reached into the hole, and, touching them with his fingers, counted the piles. There were ninety-eight of them. He lifted one and counted the coins in it. There were twenty.
"Hold the candle here," he said.
Thomas O'Flaherty, rising to his knees, set the candle on the floor at the edge of the hole.
"They're all gold, every single one of them," said Meldon. "If those were no more than just ordinary sovereigns you'd have pretty near two thousand pounds. But by the weight of them I'd say that they're worth two or three sovereigns each. You're a rich man, Thomas O'Flaherty Pat. There may be richer men in the province of Connacht, but I don't believe there's one with the same command of ready cash. I declare to goodness, if it wasn't for Gladys Muriel, I'd wait a few years on the chance of getting Mary Kate. However did you get all that money up out of the cave?"
"I did have a bit of rope fixed to a big stone the way it wouldn't shift on me and me going up and down. The lids of the iron boxes gave me my 'nough of work before I got them lifted, and them rusty with the damp there was in it. But, with the help of God, I got them lifted at the latter end. Then I'd be putting the gold into a bit of a bag that I had on me. It was very little I could take at the one time, for it would surprise you how heavy it is, and me having to climb the rope and not one at the top to give me a hand. Maybe it wouldn't be more than once in the day and often not that much itself that I'd go down. I did be in dread that some of the boys would discover what I was after. From first to last I wasn't less than a whole year at the job."
"You would be all that," said Meldon. "It's a mortal pity I wasn't here at the time. We'd have rigged up some sort of pulley at the top of the hole, and with me filling at the bottom and you taking the stuff at the top we'd have had it out in a single day. But there's no use talking about that now. The gold's here, right enough, however you got it."
Meldon turned the coins over and over in his hand, held one to the light and then another, felt the weight of them singly and then two or three at a time.
"What put you on to it?" he said. "What made you think of looking in that hole?"
"Sure the people always had it that there was a deal of gold on the island somewhere. My father knew it and his father before him, and everybody had heard tell of it. Long ago they did be searching for it. There was two of the gentry once came to look after it. But people got tired, finding nothing, and at the latter end they gave it up. It's maybe a hundred years since anybody laid down his mind to look for it. But there was one place that I knew nobody ever searched, and that was the Poll-na-phuca."
"Why not?"
"They'd be in dread on account of them that do be in it."
"Them that—oh, the fairies, of course!"