BURIED TREASURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 261, 4 November 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

BURIED TREASURE.

Undo lan stopped suddenly and, like a conspirator, looked quickly up and down tho street. Peggy and Peter halted, too, wondering. "A secret!" whispered Uncle lan darkly. "Beneath that house.'' "Which house?" asked Peter quickly. "Ssh!" answered Uncle lan. "Tho house called Tho Cedars —tho one with, tho single poplar. Beneath that house' is—" "What?" asked Peter and Peggy. "Buried treasure!" replied Uncle lan. "Let us move on." "How do you know there's treasure?" demanded Peggy as they continued their walk. "Because," said Uncle lan slowly, "the hoard is mine! Listen! When I was a boy this estate was just waste land, and many a grand game wo had on it. And, of course, we played at pirates. That was what started the buried treasure idea. One of our games was to bury something, then exchange maps and codes, and try to find each other's cache. Well, I had a special little hideyhole, of my own where I kept my treasure in a tin box. Nobody except me knew anything about that place. "After one summer holiday I came home, and you can imagine my disgust at finding builders busy on the waste land and my consternation at seeing a gigantic pyramid of bricks right on top of my secret treasure. It nearly broke my heart. I hung around that stack; I probed in its crevices; I was chased by the watchman; I watched bricks removed and calculated when tho pyramid would disappear; but more and more bricks kept arriving and I grew desperate. "I pottered around the pile so often and so long that eventually I attracted the attention of the foreman. He'd already threatened mo several times, but at last he asked outright what my worry was. I told him of the treasure below; he laughed; he told his pals; they roared; then, catching my miserable eye, the foreman came across and slipped sixpence into my hand with, 'Now, be off! And bury that!' I shot off before further questions were asked, and in

future watched the pyramid only from a safe distance." "Did you ever recover your treasure ?" asked Peter. Uncle lan shook his head. "It's still beneath that house," he said. "What sort of treasure was it?" Peggy inquired. "Oh, odds and ends," replied Uncle lan sadly; "a broken knife, a spring-, a couple of old golf balls, was money, too!"' "How much?" asked Peter and Peggy together. "A ha'p'ny," sighed Uncle lan. "Just a ha'p'ny."