The Press., 1893-04-20

dent which occurred aDOuG the peT1Ou ln question. The weather was chilly (oh, rare and happy accidentD and fire was blazing upon the hearth. Twas heated with exercise and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn chair close to the chimney. Just as placed the parchment in your hand. and as you were in the act of inspecting it, W off, the Newfoundland, entered and leaped upon your shoulders. With your left hand you caressed him and kept him off, while your right, hold ing the parchment, was permitted to fall -listlessly between your knees and in close proximity to the fire At one moment l thought the blaze had caught it and was about to caution you, but before could speak you had withdrawn it and were engaged in its examination.
 "When considered all these particu- lars, doubted rot for moment that heat had been the agent in bringing to light upon the parchment the skull which I saw designed upon it. You are well aware that chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out of mind, by means of which it is possible to write upon either paper or vellum so that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the action of fire. Zaffre digested in aqua regia and di- luted with four times it's weight of wa ter is sometimes employed; green tint ] results. The regulars of cobalt dis solved in spirit of niter give red. These colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals after the material writ ten upon cools,,b again become appar r ent upon the reapplication of heat.
 "I now scrutinized the deaths head with care It's outer edges-the edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vel lum-were far more distinct than the others. It was clear that the action of 1 the caloric had been imperfect or un- equal. immediately kindled fire and subjected every portion of the parch- ment to glowing heat. At first the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the skull, but upon perse- vering in the experiment. there became visible at the corner of the slip, diago- nally opposite to the spot in which the deaths head was delineated, the figure of what at first supposed to. be goat. A closer scrutiny. however, satisfied me that it was intended for kid
 ''Ha! hat' said 1, ito be sure have no right to laugh at you-$1 ,500,00 of money is too serious matter for mirth but you are not about to establish third link in your chain-you will not find any special connection between your pirates and a goat-pirates, you know, have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming interest" "But have just said that the figure was not that of a goat.'
 "Well, kid, then-pretty much the same thing"
 | Pretty much, but not altogether" said Legrand. ''You may have heard of Captain Kidd. at once looked upon the figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature. I Esay signature because it's position upon the vellum suggested this idea. The deaths head at the corner diagonally opposite had, in the same manner, the air of a stamp or seal. But l was sorely put out by the absence of all else-of the body to my imagined instrument of the text for my context.''.
 Il presume you expected to find let ter between the stamp and the sigma ture.'
 Something of that kind. The fact is, felt irresistibly impressed with pre- sentiment of some vast good fortune im- pending. can scarcely say why Per haps, after all, it was rather 8 desire than an actual belief, but do you know that Jupiter's silly words about the bug being of solid gold had 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 ap- peared I should never have become aware of the deaths head, and so never the possessor of the treasurer
 ''But proceed-I am all impatience."
 "Well, you have heard, of course, the many stories current, the thousand vague rumors a1oat, 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 SC suited, it appeared to me, only from the circumstance of the buried treasure still remaining entombed. Had Kidd con- cealed his plunder for time and after. ward reclaimed it, the rumors would scarcely have reached us in their presen. unvarying form.
 "You will observe that the stories told are all about money seekers, not about money finders. Had the pirate recov- cred his money, there the affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some accident-say the loss of memo. randum indicating it's locality-had de. priyed him of the means of recovering it, and that this accident had become known to his followers, who otherwise gl might never have heard that treasure had been concealed at all, and who, busying themselves in vain because un- guided attempts to regain it, had given \ first birth and then universal currency to the reports which are now so com, mon. Have you ever heard of any i'm portant treasure being unearthed along the coastY .e(
 Il "Never."
 'sBut that Kidd's accumulations were immense is well known. I took it for .I granted, therefore, that the earth still ,I held them, and you will scarcely be sur. prised when tell you that I felt hope nearly amounting to certainty that the . parchment so strangely found involved a lost record of the place of deposit"
 "But how did you proceed"
 '1 held the vellum again to the fire after increasing the heat, but nothing I appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt might have something to do with the failure, so carefully rinsed the parchment by pouring warm water over it, and having done this placed it in tin pan, with the skull