The rule in Channel Island ghost lore was clear: a ghost could not speak until it was spoken to, and the right words were "In the name of the Great God, what ails you?" The old Seigneurie servant Caroline regretted that nobody had said them to the lady of the Seigneurie. The two brothers of Little Sark did say them.
When they met their mother on one of the island's paths and asked her the question, she was free to answer. She told them where the hoard was hidden, in the beam of her own kitchen, "and then disappeared, and was never seen again."
It is a short story, and one of several in Carey's collection about the dead coming back to reveal hidden money or papers. A St Pierre du Bois man found a mug of five-franc pieces on his barn wall after his dead father appeared to him, and a drowned Guernsey fisherman told his brother, from a phantom boat, which beam his missing title deed was on. The Little Sark version is the only one set on Sark. The cottage is not identified, so the map point marks Little Sark.
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