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Tarboe looked on with a keener eye and understanding, for was she not bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh? Who was he that he should fail to know her? He saw the moonlight play on her face and hair, and he waved his head with the swaying of her body, and smacked his lips in thought of the fortune which, smuggling days over, would carry them up to St. Louis Street, Quebec, there to dwell as in a garden of good things.

After many days had passed, Joan tired of the concertina, of her own dancing, of her father’s tales, and became inquisitive. So at last she said:

“Father, what’s all this for?”

Tarboe did not answer her at once, but, turning to Bissonnette, asked him to play “The Demoiselle with the Scarlet Hose.” It was a gay little demoiselle according to Bissonnette, and through the creaking, windy gaiety Tarboe and his daughter could talk without being heard by the musician. Tarboe lit another cigar–that badge of greatness in the eyes of his fellow-habitants, and said:

“What’s all this for, Joan? Why, we’re here for our health.” His teeth bit on the cigar with enjoyable emphasis.

“If you don’t tell me what’s in the wind, you’ll be sorry. Come, where’s the good? I’ve got as much head as you have, father, and–“

“Mon Dieu! Much more. That’s not the question. It was to be a surprise to you.”

“Pshaw! You can only have one minute of surprise, and you can have months of fun looking out for a thing. I don’t want surprises; I want what you’ve got–the thing that’s kept you good-tempered while we lie here like snails on the rocks.”

“Well, my cricket, if that’s the way you feel, here you are. It is a long story, but I will make it short. Once there was a pirate called Brigond, and he brought into a bay on the coast of Labrador a fortune in some kegs–gold, gold! He hid it in a cave, wrapping around it the dead bodies of two men. It is thought that one can never find it so. He hid it, and sailed away. He was captured, and sent to prison in France for twenty years. Then he come back with a crew and another ship, and sailed into the bay, but his ship went down within sight of the place. And so the end of him and all. But wait. There was one man, the mate on the first voyage. He had been put in prison also. He did not get away as soon as Brigond. When he was free, he come to the captain of a ship that I know, the Free-and-Easy, that sails to Havre, and told him the story, asking for passage to Quebec. The captain–Gobal–did not believe it, but said he would bring him over on the next voyage. Gobal come to me and told me all there was to tell. I said that it was a true story, for Pretty Pierre told me once he saw Brigond’s ship go down in the bay; but he would not say how, or why, or where. Pierre would not lie in a thing like that, and–“

“Why didn’t he get the gold himself?”

“What is money to him? He is as a gipsy. To him the money is cursed. He said so. Eh bien! some wise men are fools, one way or another. Well, I told Gobal I would give the man the Ninety-Nine for the cruise and search, and that we should divide the gold between us, if it was found, taking out first enough to make a dot for you and a fine handful for Bissonnette. But no, shake not your head like that. It shall be so. Away went Gobal four months ago, and I get a letter from him weeks past, just after Pentecost, to say he would be here some time in the first of July, with the man.