The treasures are inhumed again in their respective holes: they are not ours.
Each deposition seems to cost him a twinge; and at one moment I fancied I saw him slip his hand into his coat pocket.
'We must re-bury them all,' say I.
'O yes,' he answers with integrity.

'I was wiping my hand.' The beauties of the tesselated floor of the governor's house are once again consigned to darkness; the trench is filled up; the sod laid smoothly down; he wipes the perspiration from his forehead with the same handkerchief he had used to mop the skeleton and tesserae clean; and we make for the eastern gate of the fortress.
Dawn bursts upon us suddenly as we reach the opening.

It comes by the lifting and thinning of the clouds that way till we are bathed in a pink light.

The direction of his homeward journey is not the same as mine, and we part under the outer slope.
Walking along quickly to restore warmth I muse upon my eccentric friend, and cannot help asking myself this question: Did he really replace the gilded image of the god Mercurius with the rest of the treasures?
He seemed to do so; and yet I could not testify to the fact.

Probably, however, he was as good as his word.
* * * It was thus I spoke to myself, and so the adventure ended.