Had the jaws of the skull moved in speech,
Willie could not have been more terrified than he was by seeing the
rat spring from its strange hiding place.
Dropping the horrible thing upon the rock at his feet, where the
rotten bone broke into fragments, he rushed out upon the beach and
called us back. Attracted to the spot again, he watched the dog
burrowing in the shingle. Amongst the stones and sand he saw the
dull sheen of what he at first supposed was a curious seashell, but
which, when he picked up and examined it, he found to be an old
coin. Believing that there might be more of these buried in the
sand, he went down upon his knees once more to search. He had just
discovered the bar of metal when we returned.
"What is it?" he said. "Why, it's silver?"
We each in turn handled the little bar, and expressed our opinion
regarding what Hercus supposed it to be. It was heavy enough,
certainly, to be silver; but the improbability of such a piece of
the precious metal being left there presented itself, and none of
us was quite satisfied until Hercus, taking out his knife, cut and
scraped the surface of the ingot and revealed the shining white
metal underlying the grit and tarnish that had gathered upon it
during the years--perhaps the centuries--it had lain there
undisturbed.
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