"I have it!" he cried to Rosa. Seizing the candle, he thrust it
into the opening. He beheld what he had expected to find, a small
cavern or grotto which had evidently been pierced during the
digging of the well. He could appreciate now how simple had been
the task of sealing it up so as to baffle discovery. Rosa, poised
above him, scarcely breathed until he straightened himself and
turned his face upward once more.
He tried to speak, but voiced nothing more than a hoarse croak;
the candle in his hand described erratic figures.
"What do you see?" the girl cried in an agony of suspense.
"I--It's here! B-boxes, chests, casks--everything!"
"God be praised! My father's fortune at last!"
Rosa forgot her surroundings; she beat her hands together, calling
upon O'Reilly to make haste and determine beyond all question that
the missing hoard was indeed theirs. She drew perilously close to
the well and knelt over it like some priestess at her devotions;
her eyes were brimming with tears and there was a roaring in her
ears. It was not strange that she failed to see or to hear the
approach of a great blurred figure which materialized out of the
night and took station scarcely an arm's-length behind her.
"He intended it for his children," she sobbed, "and Providence
saved it from our wicked enemies.
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