one _Captain_ Kidd. I at once looked on the figure of the animal as a
kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature. I say signature, because
its position on the vellum suggested this idea. The death's-head at the
corner diagonally 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 that 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 on 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 on 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 on 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