th and bear whatever came to
him, until sometimes the half-drunken old man would be driven almost
mad by his stubborn silence. Maybe he would stop in the midst of the
beating he was administering, and, grinding his teeth, would cry out:
"Won't ye say naught? Won't ye say naught? Well, then, I'll see if I
can't make ye say naught." When things had reached such a pass as this
Molly would generally interfere to protect her foster-son, and then she
and Tom would together fight the old man until they had wrenched the
stick or the strap out of his hand. Then old Matt would chase them
out-of-doors and around and around the house for maybe half an hour until
his anger was cool, when he would go back again, and for a time the
storm would be over.

Besides his foster-mother, Tom Chist had a very good friend in Parson
Jones, who used to come over every now and then to Abrahamson's hut
upon the chance of getting a half-dozen fish for breakfast. He always
had a kind word or two for Tom, who during the winter evenings would go
over to the good man's house to learn his letters, and to read and
write and cipher a little, so that by now he was able to spell the
words out of the Bible and the almanac, and knew enough to change
tuppence into four ha'pennies.

This is the sort of boy Tom Chist was, and this is the sort of life he
led.

In the late spring or early summer of 1699 Captain Kidd's sloop sailed
into the mouth of the Delaware Bay and changed the whole fortune of his
life.

And this is how you come to the story of Captain Kidd's treasure-box.

II

Old Matt Abrahamson kept the flat-bottomed boat in which he went
fishing some distance down the shore, and in the neighborhood of the
old wreck that had been sunk on the Shoals. This was the usual
fishing-ground of the settlers, and here Old Matt's boat generally lay
drawn up on the sand.

There had been a thunder-storm that afternoon, and Tom had gone down
the beach to bale out the boat in readiness for the morning's fishing.

It was full moonlight now, as he was returning, and the night sky was
full of floating clouds. Now and then there was a dull flash to the
westward, and once a muttering growl of thunder, promising another
storm to come.

All that day the pirate sloop had been lying just off the shore back of
the Capes, and now Tom Chist could see the sails glimmering pallidly in
the moonlight, spread for drying after the storm. He was walking up the
shore homeward whe