e was boys
together away in dear old Nantucket?'--Nantucket, you'll understand,
gents, bein' the place where I was born.

"`No,' says I, `I don't, and that's the cold, solid truth. But if
you're really Abe Johnson you'll remember the names of a few people in
Nantucket, and a few of the things that we done together. Where, f'r
instance, did I live when you knew me?'

"Well, he told me where I lived, give me the names of a lot of people
that we both used to know, and reminded me of a good many things that we
done together that I'd clean forgot all about until he mentioned 'em.
Oh yes, he was Abe, sure; and when he see that he'd satisfied me upon
that p'int, he told me a real downright pitiful tale, and struck me for
ten dollars. He was right away down on his luck, he said; and I guess
he was speakin' the truth, if looks went for anything.

"Now, Abe never had amounted to much when I knew him; he was just a
low-down, ornery cuss every way that you looked at him. But I was
al'ays a bit tender-hearted, and I sorter pitied the feller; so a'ter I
passed over the ten-spot to him I took him into a restyrong and filled
him up with a good square meal. And while we was eatin' he told me a
long yarn about what he'd been doin'; how he'd tried fust one thing and
then another, and had finally took to the sea. And it seemed that his
bad luck had follered him there, for he'd ended up by bein' shipwrecked
upon one of them uncharted reefs that you runs up agin sometimes in the
Pacific, he bein' the only survivor out of the whole crowd. If he was
tellin' me the truth he must ha' had a pretty rough time on that reef,
for he described it as bein' as bare as the back of your hand, with
nothin' to eat but birds' eggs and clams, and only a small, tricklin'
stream of brackish, scarcely drinkable water to quench his thirst with.
And he was on that there reef five solid months afore a whaler comed
along and, seein' his signals, took him off, and later transferred him
to another ship that brought him home.

"Now when Abe had got this far with his yarn he begun to get mysterious,
sunk his voice to a whisper, and asked if he could trust me. I told him
that he best knew whether he could or not, and that anyway, if the thing
was a secret, I didn't want to hear anything about it.

"`Ah, but,' says he, `there's a fortune in it--a fortune for both of us,
Eph, if I can only trust you.'

"`Well,' I says, `as I told ye before, that's for you to