I tell you
Kidd never was up the Hudson--what the plague do you know of Kidd and
his haunts?"

"What do I know?" echoed the half-pay officer; "why, I was in London at
the time of his trial, aye, and I had the pleasure of seeing him hanged
at Execution Dock."

"Then, sir, let me tell you that you saw as pretty a fellow hanged as
ever trod shoe leather. Aye!" putting his face nearer to that of the
officer, "and there was many a coward looked on, that might much better
have swung in his stead."

The half-pay officer was silenced; but the indignation thus pent up in
his bosom glowed with intense vehemence in his single eye, which
kindled like a coal.

Peechy Prauw, who never could remain silent, now took up the word, and
in a pacifying tone observed that the gentleman certainly was in the
right. Kidd never did bury money up the Hudson, nor indeed in any of
those parts, though many affirm the fact. It was Bradish and others of
the buccaneers who had buried money, some said in Turtle Bay, others on
Long-Island, others in the neighborhood of Hell Gate. Indeed, added he,
I recollect an adventure of Mud Sam, the negro fisherman, many years
ago, which some think had something to do with the buccaneers. As we
are all friends here, and as it will go no farther, I'll tell it to
you.

"Upon a dark night many years ago, as Sam was returning from fishing in
Hell Gate--"

Here the story was nipped in the bud by a sudden movement from the
unknown, who, laying his iron fist on the table, knuckles downward,
with a quiet force that indented the very boards, and looking grimly
over his shoulder, with the grin of an angry bear. "Heark'ee,
neighbor," said he, with significant nodding of the head, "you'd better
let the buccaneers and their money alone--they're not for old men and
old women to meddle with. They fought hard for their money, they gave
body and soul for it, and wherever it lies buried, depend upon it he
must have a tug with the devil who gets it."

This sudden explosion was succeeded by a blank silence throughout the
room. Peechy Prauw shrunk within himself, and even the red-faced
officer turned pale. Wolfert, who, from a dark corner of the room, had
listened with intense eagerness to all this talk about buried treasure,
looked with mingled awe and reverence on this bold buccaneer, for such
he really suspected him to be. There was a chinking of gold and a
sparkling of jewels in all his stories about the Spanish Main that