entleman opined that the foundling's parents must
have been of quality. A kerchief had been wrapped around the baby's
neck and under its arms and tied behind, and in the corner, marked with
very fine needlework, were the initials T.C.

"What d'ye call him, Molly?" said Parson Jones. He was standing, as he
spoke, with his back to the fire, warming his palms before the blaze.
The pocket of the great-coat he wore bulged out with a big case-bottle
of spirits which he had gathered up out of the wreck that afternoon.
"What d'ye call him, Molly?"

"I'll call him Tom, after my own baby."

"That goes very well with the initial on the kerchief," said Parson
Jones. "But what other name d'ye give him? Let it be something to go
with the C."

"I don't know," said Molly.

"Why not call him 'Chist,' since he was born in a chist out of the sea?
'Tom Chist'--the name goes off like a flash in the pan." And so "Tom
Chist" he was called and "Tom Chist" he was christened.

So much for the beginning of the history of Tom Chist. The story of
Captain Kidd's treasure-box does not begin until the late spring of
1699.

That was the year that the famous pirate captain, coming up from the
West Indies, sailed his sloop into the Delaware Bay, where he lay for
over a month waiting for news from his friends in New York.

For he had sent word to that town asking if the coast was clear for him
to return home with the rich prize he had brought from the Indian seas
and the coast of Africa, and meantime he lay there in the Delaware Bay
waiting for a reply. Before he left he turned the whole of Tom Chist's
life topsy-turvy with something that he brought ashore.

By that time Tom Chist had grown into a strong-limbed, thick-jointed
boy of fourteen or fifteen years of age. It was a miserable dog's life
he lived with old Matt Abrahamson, for the old fisherman was in his
cups more than half the time, and when he was so there was hardly a day
passed that he did not give Tom a curse or a buffet or, as like as not,
an actual beating. One would have thought that such treatment would
have broken the spirit of the poor little foundling, but it had just
the opposite effect upon Tom Chist, who was one of your stubborn,
sturdy, stiff-willed fellows who only grow harder and more tough the
more they are ill-treated. It had been a long time now since he had
made any outcry or complaint at the hard usage he suffered from old
Matt. At such times he would shut his tee