"No, no," he added presently, "a starn chase, they say, is a long chase;
and the owners of them doubloons, if owners they can now be called, must
be out of sight, long before this. Accordin' to McGosh, some of the gold
r'aally captured had passed back through the hands of them that sent it to
sea, and they did not know their own children!"

"It is certainly hard to identify coin, and it would be a bold man who
should stand up, in open court, and make oath to its being the same he had
once held. I have heard of the same gold's having answered the purposes of
twenty banks, one piece being so like another."

"Ay, ay, sir, gold is gold; and any of it is good enough for me, though
doubloons is my favour_ites_. When a fellow has got half-a-dozen doubloons
alongside of his ribs, he can look the landlord full in the eye; and no
one thinks of saying to sich as he, 'it's time to think of shipping
ag'in.'"

From the nature of this discourse, it will not be easy for the reader to
imagine the real condition of Daggett. At the very moment he was thus
conversing of money, and incidentally manifesting his expectations of
accompanying Roswell Gardiner in the expedition that was about to sail,
the man had not actually four-and-twenty hours of life in him. Mary Pratt
had foreseen his true state, accustomed as she was to administer to the
wants of the dying; but no one else appeared to be aware of it, not even
the deacon. It was true that the fellow spoke, as it might be, from his
throat only, and that his voice was hollow, and sometimes reduced to a
whisper; but he ascribed this, himself, to the circumstance that he had
taken a cold. Whether the deacon believed this account or not, it might be
difficult to say; but he appeared to give it full credit. Perhaps his mind