If the old man of the mountain was not in his grave, where was he? He had certainly not gone back to the world and left the buried treasure behind him. If the grave had been empty, the soldiers might have suspected foul play. Josiah Woodring, who had been his agent and provider, had already been five years in his own grave at the time they had arrived on the mountain. As long as they believed that the bones of the old man were quietly at rest under the oak slab in the garden spot, the condition of the hut, neglected and going to decay, was sufficient evidence that he had died there, and that no one had occupied it for more than five years before. With almost his last breath Josiah had announced his death to the doctor from the settlement; and under such solemn circumstances it was impossible to believe that he had stated anything but the truth. He had not mentioned, it is true, the precise time when the old man died.
After the night when the treasure was found, the three soldiers, to thoroughly satisfy themselves, had cleared away the earth down to the bed-rock. Indeed, the cask itself was evidence enough that the bones of the old man were not below it, for he himself must have buried that. If Josiah had known of its existence, it would certainly have traveled down through the settlement in his two-steer cart, like any other honest cask, and neither cattle nor driver would have ever come back. After taking such a load to market, Josiah would have established himself in luxury in his ignorant way, and probably cut a great splurge in the "low country," with no end of pomp and vulgarity.
The three soldiers studied this problem with much care, weighing all the evidence for and against. They even hit upon a plan of determining when the old man came limping through the settlement of Cashiers behind Josiah\'s cart, covered with dust, and staggering under the weight of his leathern knapsack. They emptied out the little keg of gold on the earthen floor a second time, and began a search for the latest date on the coins. Some were remarkably old and badly worn. A few of the guinea pieces bore the heads of the old Georges and "Dei gratia Rex," and 17— this and 17— that, and some of the figures were as smooth as the pate, and as blind as the eyes, of the king on the coin. The newest double-eagles—and there were quite a number of them—bore the date 1833, so it must have been in that year or the year following that the old man without a name had given up the world and become a hermit on the mountain.
They decided that he must have had his own ideas about the vanity of riches, and that after doling out his gold, or, more likely, his small silver pieces, with exceeding stinginess to Josiah for the small services rendered him, when he saw his end approaching, he had buried the cask of treasure, and set up the slab above it, trusting to the superstition with which the mountain people regarded the desecration of a grave to protect the gold for all time. It would certainly have protected it from any examination by the soldiers but for the strange behavior of the bear, who had no delicate scruples. The old man had probably told Josiah, with a cunning leer in his eyes, that the empty grave was a blind to deceive any one who might climb to the top of the mountain, as the hunters had done long before, and very likely he had given him a great big silver half-dollar to wink at this little plan. When death did really come at last to claim its own, it was evident that Josiah, faithful to the old man\'s request, had either taken his remains down the mountain or buried them somewhere on the plateau without mound or slab to reveal the place, and, as likely as not, he had found enough small change in the old miser\'s pockets to pay him for his trouble.
Thus the mystery of the old man of the mountain was settled by the three soldiers, after much discussion, and the cask of gold was trundled back into the dark corner of the house, where they threw their waste, and such guineas and double-eagles as had joggled out upon the floor were kicked after it.
Directly after the lost envelop had turned up in the pool of lye, Lieutenant Coleman had made his arrangements for the manufacture of blank paper for the diary. The Blue Book was his personal property, but before commencing its destruction he counseled with Bromley, who, as a man of letters, he felt, under the circumstances, had an equal interest with himself in the fate of one half of their common library. Bromley, seated on the bank alongside the leach, was engaged at the time in making a birch broom, and as he threw down the bunch of twigs a shade of disappointment overspread his handsome face. He said that he had never thoroughly appreciated the work of the learned board of compilers until his present exile, and that it contained flights of eloquence and scraps of poetry—if you read between the lines.
"But, putting all joking aside," said Bromley, "begin with a single leaf by way of experiment, and let us see first what will be the effect on the fiber of the paper; and then, if everything works well, we will first sacrifice the index and the extracts from the Acts of that renegade Congress whose imbecility has blotted a great nation from the map of the world."
Lieutenant Coleman had more confidence in the result of the experiment they were about to make than had Bromley, for the increased length of his entry in the diary shows that he was no longer economizing paper:
"April 26, 1865. Wednesday. We have cut out ten leaves of the index of the Blue Book, which we scattered loosely on the surface of the lye in the cavity of the rock. After twenty minutes I removed a leaf which had undergone no perceptible change in appearance, and washed it thoroughly in running water. While so doing I was pleased to find that with the lightest touch of my fingers the ink dissolved, leaving underneath only a faint trace of the letters, which would in no way interfere with my writing. It required much patience to cleanse the paper of the slimy deposit of potash.
"Thursday, April 27, 1865. Of the leaves prepared yesterday, two, which were less carefully washed than the others, are somewhat yellowed by the potash and show signs of brittleness.
"April 30. We have continued our paper-making experiments, and find that a longer bath in a weaker solution of lye has the same effect on the ink, and is less injurious to the fiber of the paper. Philip has burned a lot of holes in one of the cracker-boxes, in which we place the leaves, leaving them to soak in the running water."
Thus it turned out that the dangerous envelop, by a freak of the sportive wind, was made to play an important part in the economy of the exiles, while the cask of gold stood neglected in the corner, and the summer of 1865 began with no lack of paper on which to record its events. Both Philip and the bear had been in temporary disgrace, the one for losing the tell-tale envelop, and the other for disturbing the sacred quiet of a grave. Both cases of misbehavior had resulted in important discoveries, but the mishap of Philip had produced such superior benefits that the bear was fairly distanced in the race. This may have been the reason that prompted Tumbler to try his hand, or rather his paw, again, for he was a much cleverer bear than you would think to look at his small eyes and flat skull. At any rate, one hot morning in July he put his foot in it once more, and very handsomely, too, for the benefit of his masters.
It was Philip who caught the first view of him well up on the trunk of the tallest chestnut on the plateau, which, growing in a sheltered place under the northwest hill, had not been dwarfed and twisted by the winds like its fellows higher up. At the moment he was discovered, he was licking his paw in the most peaceful and contented way, while the air about his head was thick with a small cloud of angry bees, darting furiously among the limbs and thrusting their hot stings into his shaggy coat, seeming to disturb him no more than one small gnat can disturb an ox. The soldiers had been deprived of sweets since the last of the sugar had been used, in the early winter, and a supply of honey would just fit the cravings of their educated taste. Share and share alike, bear and man, was the unwritten law of Sherman Territory, and so, while Philip shouted for the ax, he began to throw clubs at Tumbler, which were so much larger and more persuasive than the stings of the bees that the bear began promptly to back his way down the trunk of the tree.
Coleman and Bromley appeared in a jiffy, casting off their jackets and rolling up their sleeves as they came. Wh............