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Stolen Treasure by Howard Pyle
page 67 of 166 (40%)
home. So one night Captain Brand and Captain Malyoe, with two others of
the pirates, went ashore with two great chests of treasure, which they
buried somewhere on the banks of the Cobra River near the place where
the old Spanish fort had stood.

What happened after the treasure was thus buried no one may tell. 'Twas
said that Captain Brand and Captain Malyoe fell a-quarrelling and that
the upshot of the matter was that Captain Malyoe shot Captain Brand
through the head, and that the pirate who was with him served Captain
Brand's companion after the same fashion with a pistol bullet through
the body.

After that the two murderers returned to their vessel, the _Adventure_
galley, and sailed away, carrying the bloody secret of the buried
treasure with them.

[Illustration: "CAPTAIN MALYOE SHOT CAPTAIN BRAND THROUGH THE HEAD"]

But this double murder of Captain Brand and his companion happened, you
are to understand, some twenty years before the time of this story, and
while our hero was but one year old. So now to our present history.

It is a great pity that any one should have a grandfather who ended his
days in such a sort as this; but it was no fault of Barnaby True's, nor
could he have done anything to prevent it, seeing he was not even born
into the world at the time that his grandfather turned pirate, and that
he was only one year old when Captain Brand so met his death on the
Cobra River. Nevertheless, the boys with whom he went to school never
tired of calling him "Pirate," and would sometimes sing for his benefit
that famous catchpenny ballad beginning thus:
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