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 thunderstorm 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 when he became aware that at some distance ahead of him
there was a ship's boat drawn up on the little narrow beach, and a
group of men clustered about it. He hurried forward with