The lid was up, but the back was toward the door,
and he could see no more than if it had been closed.
He stooped and stared into the aperture until his dry old knees were
ready to crack. It seemed as if 'Sieur George was stone, only stone
couldn't weep like that.
Every separate bone in his neck was hot with pain. He would have given
ten dollars--ten sweet dollars!--to have seen 'Sieur George get up and
turn that trunk around.
There! 'Sieur George rose up--what a face!
He started toward the bed, and as he came to the trunk he paused, looked
at it, muttered something about "ruin," and something about "fortune,"
kicked the lid down and threw himself across the bed.
Small profit to old Kookoo that he went to his own couch; sleep was not
for the little landlord. For well-nigh half a century he had suspected
his tenant of having a treasure hidden in his house, and to-night he had
heard his own admission that in the little trunk was a fortune. Kookoo
had never felt so poor in all his days before. He felt a Creole's anger,
too, that a tenant should be the holder of wealth while his landlord
suffered poverty.
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