scientifically dissected and handled. There were also remnants of furniture and pieces of garments scattered about. At the further end, in a fissure of the rock, were stones regularly built up, the remains of a larger fire,—and what the hunter did not doubt was the smelting-furnace of the Spaniards. He poked about in the ashes, but found no silver. That had all been carried away.
But what most provoked his wonder in this rude cave was a chair! This was not such a seat as a woodman might knock up with an axe, with a rough body and a seat of woven splits, but a manufactured chair of commerce, and a chair, too, of an unusual pattern and some elegance. This chair itself was a mute witness of luxury and mystery. The chair itself might have been accounted for, though I don’t know how: but upon the back of the chair hung, as if the owner had carelessly flung it there before going out an hour before, a man’s waistcoat. This waistcoat seemed to him of foreign make and peculiar style, but what endeared it to him was its row of metal buttons. These buttons were of silver! I forget now whether he did not say they were of silver coin, and that the coin was Spanish. But I am not certain about this latter fact, and I wish to cast no air of improbability over my narrative. This rich vestment the hunter carried away with him. This was all the plunder his expedition afforded. Yes: there was one other article, and, to my mind, more significant than the vest of the hidalgo. That was a short and stout crowbar of iron; not one of the long crowbars that farmers use to pry up stones, but a short handy one, such as you would use in digging silver-ore out of the cracks of rocks.
