“You’ve found it!” Skippy cried. “Call Jibby. He has a right to be here when we get the money. And we’ll divide it into five parts; one for each of us.”
So Tad went to fetch Jibby Jones. Do you think he would come? Not a bit. When Tad told him what we had found, Jibby just rubbed his nose a little slower.
“Go ahead and look there if you want to,” he said to Tad, “but be careful you don’t fall in and get drowned. I’m glad you found it, because it is a good sign, but I’ve got to think out where that treasure is.”
That was all Tad could get out of him. When Tad came back to the cellar, we were all digging at the floor over the hollow-sounding place with our jackknives, but Tad sent me up to see if I could get half a dozen shingles off the old roof that would be sound enough to dig with. I got eight or ten and took a look at Jibby Jones. He had not stirred.
Tad and Wampus and Skippy and I dug the dirt away, using the old shingles to dig with, and we came to boards. The boards were thick, but they were dry-rotted. We cleared away all the dirt that covered them and pulled up the boards. By this time it was getting dark, especially down there in the cellar. We looked down into that dark hole and we could not see anything. I threw a piece of dirt down and it sounded dry. I asked Tad and Wampus and Skippy for a match, but none of us had any, so I went out to ask Jibby Jones for one, if he had one.
“I can’t figure it out,” he said. “I’ve been thinking and thinking, but I can’t find it.”
“Find what?” I asked him.
“The hidden treasure,” he said.
“What do you want to think for?” I asked him. “That’s no way to find it. The way to find things is to hunt for them.”
“No, George,” Jibby said. “No! That’s not the way. That’s not the way Columbus did. He thought it out first. He thought until he was sure the world was round, and then he knew that if he sailed west from Spain he would find India.”
“But he didn’t find India,” I said.
“He found something almost as good,” Jibby grinned.
“But we’ve found the treasure hole already,” I said. “Come on and help us down into it.”
“No,” Jibby said slowly. “No, George. I’m going to stay here and think where that treasure is hidden. I’ll find it quicker that way.”
“Then give me some matches,” I said. “We’ve found the secret hole and we’re going to see what is in it, treasure or no treasure.”
Jibby gave me a box of safety matches.
“Get some dry grass and light it and throw it down before you go down yourself,” he said. “There may be poison air down there. If there is, the air will put the grass out. If the grass burns, it is safe for you to go down. But you won’t find anything. I’m glad you found the hole, because it is a cistern, and it used to have water in it. That’s a good sign for us, because, if the cistern was put in the cellar, it means that the people in the house may have been afraid they would have to stand a siege sometime and did not want to have to surrender for lack of water. That looks like pirate business.”
Wampus was shouting for me to hurry. I ran to the old house, and we did as Jibby had told me. The grass burned clear and bright, and Wampus and Tad held me by my arms and lowered me into the old cistern. It looked as if Jibby was right; there wasn’t much down there but dust and flakes of rotted wood, but I lighted one twist of dried grass after another and scraped all over the bottom of that cistern. Tad and Wampus and Skippy were flat on the cellar floor, looking down and telling me what to do, but I had just made up my mind it was no use scraping around any longer when I scraped up a coin.
It was just one coin, and it was the only coin we found in that cistern, but it made me feel bully. We had found something, anyway.
The coin was a dollar, and it was as black as coal, the way silver gets when it isn’t kept polished. I scraped and scraped, after that, but it was no use—that was all the treasure we found. The fellows pulled me out of the hole.
By this time it was plumb dark, and we lighted matches and looked at the dollar we had found. It was an old one, but not worn at all—it was as clean and sharp as the day it was made. Tad was looking at it, and all at once he kicked up and threw his cap on the cellar floor and jumped on it, and shouted like a crazy man.
“Oh, boy!” he yelled. “Oh, you boy, you!”
As soon as we had looked at the dollar and had seen what Tad had seen, we jumped and yelled, too. Then we piled out of the cellar and ran to where Jibby Jones was still standing by the old pine tree. We were all shouting and kicking up and yipping like mad, but Jibby, when we reached him, just sighed as if there was no more hope in the world.
“Oh, you Jibby!” I shouted. “What do you think we found?”
Jibby shook his head. He was not interested
