nally opposite had, in the
same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. But I was sorely put out by
the absence of all else--of the body to my imagined instrument--of the
text for my context."

"I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the
signature."

"Something of the kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed
with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can
scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an
actual belief; but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the
bug being of solid gold, had a remarkable effect upon my fancy? And
then the series of accidents and coincidences--these were so _very_
extraordinary. Do you observe how mere an accident it was that these
events should have occurred upon the _sole_ day of all the year in
which it has been, or may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that
without the fire, or without the intervention of the dog at the
precise moment in which he appeared, I should, never have become aware
of the death's-head, and so never the possessor of the treasure?"

"But proceed--I am all impatience."

"Well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current--the
thousand vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere, upon the
Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumors must have had
some foundation in fact. And that the rumors have existed so long and
so continuously could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the
circumstance of the buried treasure still _remaining_ entombed. Had
Kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it,
the rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying
form. You will observe that the stories told are all about
money-seekers, not about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his
money, there the affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some
accident--say the loss of a memorandum indicating its locality--had
deprived him of the means of recovering it, and that this accident had
become known to his followers who otherwise might never have heard
that treasure had been concealed at all, and who, busying themselves
in vain, because unguided attempts to regain it had given first birth,
and then universal currency, to the reports which are now so common.
Have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along
the coast?"

"Never."

"But that Kidd's accumulations were immense is well known. I took it
for granted, th