life.

And this is how you come to the story of Captain Kidd's treasure box.


II

Old Matt Abrahamson kept the flat-bottomed boat in which he went fishing
some distance down the shore, and in the neighborhood of the old wreck
that had been sunk on the Shoals. This was the usual fishing ground of
the settlers, and here old Matt's boat generally lay drawn up on the
sand.

There had been a thunderstorm that afternoon, and Tom had gone down the
beach to bale out the boat in readiness for the morning's fishing.

It was full moonlight now, as he was returning, and the night sky was
full of floating clouds. Now and then there was a dull flash to the
westward, and once a muttering growl of thunder, promising another storm
to come.

All that day the pirate sloop had been lying just off the shore back of
the Capes, and now Tom Chist could see the sails glimmering pallidly in
the moonlight, spread for drying after the storm. He was walking up the
shore homeward when he became aware that at some distance ahead of him
there was a ship's boat drawn up on the little narrow beach, and a
group of men clustered about it. He hurried forward with a good deal of
curiosity to see who had landed, but it was not until he had come close
to them that he could distinguish who and what they were. Then he knew
that it must be a party who had come off the pirate sloop. They had