Then, taking advantage of a favourable day,
when breeze sufficient blew to reveal the tell-tale spot of calm water,
the treasure-hunter started in his boat, leaving one end of the chain on
shore and paying out fathom after fathom as his boat swept round the
calm and again reached shore. Now hitching the yauds to one end and the
oxen to the other, the animals were cautiously started by the twin
drivers. Slowly the chain swept over the bed of the lough, and
tightened, fast in something heavy that gave and came shoreward in the
bight of the chain. Cannily the drivers drove, and ever came the weight
nearer to dry land. Already the treasure-seeker in his boat, peering
eagerly down into the quiet water, fancied that he was a made man; he
could almost _see_ that box. But a few more yards and it was his. Alas!
In his eagerness to secure "a smith of kind" he had made insufficient
inquiries into that smith's ancestry. There was (as he discovered when
too late) a flaw in his pedigree! Some ancestress, it was said, could
not show her marriage lines, or something else was wrong. At any rate,
there was a flaw, and that was sufficient to upset the whole thing, for
the chain, not being made by a smith of kind, was of course not of the
true temper.
Pages:
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128