Jack had been digging for hours it seemed.  His skin was hot and surely would be sweating if it wasn’t for the sand caked to his forehead.  The thrill of the search and the hopes of a fortune kept him going.

Blind Eye Bert seemed a dubious choice to be giving him direction.  Pointing every which way while alternately switching his eye patch from right side to left side.  According to Blind Eye his left eye was more reasonable, but sometimes it took the creative right eye to find a good spot to search.  For now his right eye was exposed, twitching as it searched across the oceanfront.

Blind Eye paced ten short strides and spun to a halt.

“There it is, m’ boy!  There it is!”  He pointed down to the sand as Jack came scurrying to meet him.  ”There’s where we’ll find our fortune lad!”

Jack hustled, shovel in hand.  Looking down the sand looked the same as all the other sand he had dug through, with only a few small coins to show for his trouble.

“You sure, Blind Eye?” he asked.  ”What’s so special about this spot?”

“The X my boy, the X!  Can’t you see it?  The ripples in the sand, and the seaweed make a clear X.  This must be the spot!”

Jack looked closer.  Blind Eye was right.  He dug with reckless abandon, the sand sometimes not making it from his the shovel over his shoulder and instead landing in his hair.

Blind Eye paced a few steps as Jack dug and knelt closer to the ground.  Blind Eye scraped a handful of sand up with one hand, and jingled a shiny coin out of his pocket, placing it in the hole before covering it back up with sand.

“Grandpa!” Jack shouted as he raced back with a coin held triumphantly in the air.  ”We struck it rich!  A quarter!”

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