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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 upon 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 upon 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 upon 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
continuous, could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the
circumstance of the buried treasure still remaining entombed. Had Kidd
concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it, the
rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying form.
You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers,
not about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his money, there the
affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some accident--say the
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