 a
conjuror than a clerk - it's search, man, search - See, there's the Ye clear and
distinct.«
    »Aha! I see it now - it is search - number one. Mein himmel! then there must
be a number two, mein goot friend: for search is what you call to seek and dig,
and this is but number one! Mine wort, there is one great big prize in de wheel
for us, goot Maister Ochiltree.«
    »Aweel, it may be sae; but we canna howk for't enow - we hae nae shules, for
they hae taen them a' awa - and it's like some o' them will be sent back to
fling the earth into the hole, and mak a' things trig again. But an ye'll sit
down wi' me a while in the wood, I'se satisfy your honour that ye hae just
lighted on the only man in the country that could hae tauld about Malcolm
Misticot and his hidden treasure - But first we'll rub out the letters on this
board, for fear it tell tales.«
    And, by the assistance of his knife, the beggar erased and defaced the
characters so as to make them quite unintelligible, and then daubed the board
with clay so as to obliterate all traces of the erasure.
    Dousterswivel stared at him in ambiguous silence. There was an intelligence
and alacrity about all the old man's movements, which indicated a person that
could not be easily overreached, and yet (for even rogues acknowledge in some
degree the spirit of precedence) our adept felt the disgrace of playing a
secondary part, and dividing winnings with so mean an associate. His appetite
for gain, however, was sufficiently sharp to overpower his offended pride, and
though far more an impostor than a dupe, he was not without a certain degree of
personal faith even in the gross superstitions by means of which he imposed upon
others. Still, being accustomed to act as a leader on such occasions, he felt
humiliated at feeling himself in the situation of a vulture marshalled to his
prey by a carrion-crow. - »Let me, however, hear this story to an end,« thought
Dousterswivel, »and it will be hard if I do not make mine account in it better
as Maister Edie Ochiltrees makes proposes.«
    The adept, thus transformed into a pupil from a teacher of the mystic art,
followed Ochiltree in passive acquiescence to the Prior's Oak - a spot, as the
reader may remember, at a short distance from
