n the vicinity of the
Spanish Main--"

"If it was the place where we were to make slaves of all the natives,
and I was to be king, and you Grand Vizier," he answered, as if it were
a weighty matter, and he on the witness-stand, "it was in the
Pacific--the South Pacific, where the whale-oil comes from. A coral
atoll, with a crystal lagoon in the middle for our ships, and a fringe
of palms along the margin--coco-palms, you remember; and the lagoon was
green, sometimes, and sometimes blue; and the sharks never came over the
bar, but the porpoises came in and played for us, and made fireworks in
the phosphorescent waves...."

His eyes grew almost tender, as he gazed out of the window, and ceased
to speak without finishing the sentence,--which it took me some minutes
to follow out to the end, in my mind. I was delighted and touched to
find these foolish things so green in his memory.

"The plan involved," said I soberly, "capturing a Spanish galleon filled
with treasure, finding two lovely ladies in the cabin, and offering them
their liberty. And we sailed with them for a port; and, as I remember
it, their tears at parting conquered us, and we married them; and lived
richer than oil magnates, and grander than Monte Cristos forever after:
do you remember?"

"Remember! Well, I should smile!"--he had been laughing like a boy, with
his old frank laugh. "Them's the things we don't forget.... Did you ever
gather any information as to what a galleon really was? I never did."

"I had no more idea than I now have of the Rosicrucian Mysteries; and I
must confess," said I, "that I'm a little hazy on the galleon question
yet. As to piracy, now, and robbers and robbery, actual life fills out
the gaps in the imagination of boyhood, doesn't it, Jim?"

"Apt to," he assented, "but specifically? As to which, you know?"

"Well, I've had my share of experience with them," I answered, "though
not so much in the line of rob-or, as we planned, but more as rob-ee."

Jim looked at me quizzically.

"Board of Trade, faro, or ... what?" he ventured.

"General business," I responded, "and ... politics."

"Local, state, or national?" he went on, craftily ignoring the general
business.

"A little national, some state, but the bulk of it local. I've been
elected County Treasurer, down where I live, for four successive terms."

"Good for you!" he responded. "But I don't see how that can be made to
harmonize with your remark about rob-or and r