t the neck by a piece of stout and
tarnished braid of gold. It had no name or card upon it nor letters on
its side, and it lay for nearly thirty years high on a shelf, in an
old chest, behind three tiers of tins of papers, in the deepest corner
of the vault of the old building of the Old Colony Bank.

Yet this money was passed to no one's credit on the bank's books, nor
was it carried as part of the bank's reserve. When the old concern
took out its national charter, in 1863, it did not venture or did not
remember to claim this specie as part of the reality behind its
greenback circulation. It was never merged in other funds, nor
converted, nor put at interest. The bag lay there intact, with one
brown stain of blood upon it, where Romolo de Soto had grasped it
while a cutlass gash was fresh across his hand. And so it was carried,
in specie, in its original package: "Four hundred and twenty-three
American eagles, and fifteen hundred and fifty-six Spanish doubloons;
deposited by ---- De Soto, June twenty-fourth, eighteen hundred and
twenty-nine; _for the benefit of whom it may concern_."

And it concerned very much two people with whom our narration has to
do,--one, James McMurtagh, our hero; the other, Mr. James Bowdoin,
then called Mr. James, member of the firm of James Bowdoin's Sons. For
De Soto, having escaped with his neck, took good pains never to call
for his money.

II.

A very real pirate was De Soto. None of your Captain Kidds, who make
one voyage or so before they are hanged, and even then find time to
bury kegs of gold in every marshy and uncomfortable spot from Maine to
Florida. No, no. De Soto had better uses for his gold than that.
Commonly he traveled with it; and thus he even brought it to Boston
with him on that unlucky voyage in 1829, when Mr. James Bowdoin was
kind enough to take charge of it for him. One wonders what he meant to
do with a bag of gold in Boston in 1829.

This happened on Thursday, the 24th of June. It was the day after Mr.
James Bowdoin's (or Mr. James's, as Jamie McMurtagh and others in the
bank always called him; it was his father who was properly Mr. James
Bowdoin, and his grandfather who was Mr. Bowdoin)--after Mr. James's
Commencement Day; and it was the day after Mr. James's engagement as
junior clerk in the counting-room; and it was the day after Mr.
James's engagement to be married; and it was the day but one after Mr.
James's class's supper at Mr. Porter's tavern