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"The cave is about a quarter of a mile from the wood-pile, near a large hemlock tree. There is a rope that goes down into the cave, and it hangs under the roots of the tree. Look close or you can't find it. I leave a map of the route from the pile of wood to the cave in this letter. I hope the hant won't bother you while you are getting the money, as he has bothered me ever since I have been writing this letter.

"Julius Jones."

Words would fail us, were we to attempt to tell just how Silas felt after he had finished reading this interesting communication. He hoped it might be true—that there was a cave with a fortune in it which he could have for the finding of it—and consequently it was very easy for him to believe that it was true; but there were one or two things that ought to have attracted his attention and aroused his suspicions at once.

In the first place, there was the document itself. It was now the latter part of August, and if the letter was left in the wood-pile on the day it purported to be written, it had been exposed for eight long months to some of the most furious snow and rain storms that had ever visited that section of the country, and yet the writing looked fresh, and there was not a single wrinkle or even the suspicion of a stain upon the envelope. It could not have been cleaner if it had but just been taken out of the post office.