"Yes."

Pym looked at him wonderingly.

"Thomas," he said, "you are a very queer little devil."

He also said: "And it is possible you may find the treasure you are
always talking about. Don't jump to the ceiling, my friend, because I
say that. I was once after the treasure, myself; and you can see
whether I found it."

From about that time, on the chances that this mysterious treasure
might spring up in the form of a new kind of flower, Pym zealously
cultivated the ground, and Tommy had an industrious time of it. He was
taken off his stories, which at once regained their elasticity, and
put on to exercises.

"If you have nothing to say on the subject, say nothing," was one of
the new rules, which few would have expected from Pym. Another was:
"As soon as you can say what you think, and not what some other person
has thought for you, you are on the way to being a remarkable man."

"Without concentration, Thomas, you are lost; concentrate, though your
coat-tails be on fire.

"Try your hand at description, and when you have done chortling over
the result, reduce the whole by half without missing anything out.

"Analyze your characters and their motives at the prodigious length in